Iraqi National Congress

The Iraqi National Congress (INC) was created at the behest of the U.S. government for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Between 1992 and 2004 the INC received more than a hundred million dollars including at least $39 million under the Bush administration alone.Jane Mayer, The Manipulator, New Yorker, 7 June 2004 An unnamed INC official told the New York Times in 2004 that INC had received $27 million in the previous four years.THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: ALLIANCES; U.S. to Halt Payments to Iraqi Group Headed by a Onetime Pentagon Favorite, by Richard A. Oppel Jr, New York Times, 18 May 2004.In 2004 INC's offices were raided in Iraq "amid allegations that Chalabi or other members of the I.N.C. had engaged in numerous misdeeds, including embezzlement, theft, and kidnapping". Several INC members fled Iraq fearing arrest.Jane Mayer, The Manipulator, New Yorker, 7 June 2004
==History==
In May 1991, following the end of Operation Desert Storm, then-President George H.W. Bush signed a covert “lethal finding” that authorized the CIA to spend a hundred million dollars to “create the conditions for removal of Saddam Hussein from power". The hope was that members of the Iraqi military would turn on Hussein and stage a military coup. Because of the restrictions placed on the CIA as a result of the Church Commission findings, it outsourced the regime-change operation to the Rendon Group, a PR firm run by John Rendon. The firm received a cost-plus (cost + 10 percent commission) to run a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign. It was an incentive to spend millions and according to Francis Brooke: “We tried to burn through forty million dollars a year...It was a very nice job.” Mayer, op. cit.; William Rivers Pitt, Your Media is Killing You, Truthout.org, 21 September 2004.
The INC represented the first major attempt by opponents of Saddam to join forces, bringing together Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs (both Islamic fundamentalist and secular), as well as democrats, nationalists and ex-military officers.Iraqi National Congress, Federation of American Scientists, accessed 25 November 2008.In June 1992, nearly 200 delegates from dozens of opposition groups met in Vienna, along with Iraq's two main Kurdish militias, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). 
In October 1992, the major Shiite groups came into the coalition and the INC held a pivotal meeting in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, choosing a three-man Leadership Council and a 26-member executive council. The three leaders included moderate Shiite Muslim cleric Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum; ex-Iraqi general Hasan Naqib; and Masud Barzani. Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Iraqi Shiite Muslim and mathematician by training, joined the group. Chalabi had previously served as chairman of the Petra Bank in Jordan, where he engaged in various cloak-and-dagger operations that ended abruptly in August 1989 when he fled the country "under mysterious circumstances" and was convicted in absentia for embezzlement, fraud and currency-trading irregularities.Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy, by Robert Dreyfuss, The American Prospect, 18 November 2002.
The INC's political platform promised "human rights and rule of law within a constitutional, democratic, and pluralistic Iraq"; preservation of Iraq's territorial integrity, and complete compliance with international law, including U.N. resolutions relating to Iraq. However, many observers noted that the INC might not act as a democratic body if it came to power, because most of its groups have an authoritarian internal structure.Iraq's Opposition Movements, by Kenneth Katzman, CRS Report, Federation of American Scientists, 26 March 1998.
Differences within the INC eventually led to its virtual collapse. In May 1994, the two main Kurdish parties began fighting with each other over territory and other issues. As a result of the growing difficulties within the INC, the United States began seeking out other opponents who could threaten the Iraqi regime, such as the Iraqi National Accord (INA), headed by Iyad Alawi. The rivalries between the Kurdish parties prompted the KDP to seek armed support from Saddam Hussein for its capture of the town of Arbil from the rival PUK. Iraq took advantage of the request by launching a military strike in which 200 oppositions were executed and as many as 2,000 arrested. Six hundred fifty oppositionists (mostly INC) were evacuated and resettled in the United States under the parole authority of the US Attorney General. 
The lNC was subsequently plagued by the dissociation of many of its constituent groups from the INC umbrella, a cutoff of funds from its international backers (including the United States), and continued pressure from Iraqi intelligence services. In 1998, however, the U.S. Congress authorized $97 million in U.S. military aid for Iraqi opposition via the Iraq Liberation Act, intended primarily for the INC.Iraq's Opposition Movements, by Kenneth Katzman, CRS Report, Federation of American Scientists, 26 March 1998.
===Clinton Administration===
By 1993 Chalabi had solidified his grip over the INC with CIA assistance. He was soon embroiled in accusations over financial questions by other members, especially the Kurds. CIA auditors, who were frequently stonewalled, found evidence of wasteful expenditures. Returns were dubious: former CIA officer Robert Baer, who liaised with the INC between '94-'95described the operation as "a Potemkin village” and the intelligence it produced as "total trash". 
:Chalabi’s agenda, he said, was to convince the United States that Saddam’s regime was “a leaking warehouse of gas, and all we had to do was light a match.” But when the agency tried to check Chalabi’s assertions about troop movement or palace plans, Baer said, “there was no detail, no sourcing—you couldn’t see it on a satellite.”
The INC operation included, among other things, what Baer has described as "a forgery shop". In the light of recent events this is noteworthy as much of the defective intelligence used by the Bush administration to sell the war originated with the INC. The shop was set up inside an abandoned schoolhouse in Salahuddin, in Northern Iraq. It produced forged documents as part of the INCs disinformation campaign. But the shop also forged US documents one of which had direct implications for Baer's career. The shop produced a forged document seemingly addressed to Chalabi from Clinton’s National Security Council asking for his help in an American-led assassination plot against Saddam. 
:“It was a complete fake,” Baer said, adding that he believed it was an effort to hoodwink the Iranians into joining a plot against Saddam; an indication of American involvement, Chalabi hoped, would convince them that the effort was serious...To Baer’s dismay, the letter eventually made its way to Langley, Virginia, and the C.I.A. accused him of being involved in the scheme. Baer said he had to pass a polygraph test in order to prove otherwise.
====The Coup Plot====
By 1995 Chalabi had used part of his CIA funding to create an armed militia with which was joined by Kurdish factions he had successfully bribed in an ill-conceived, Washington-approved plan to mount a simultaneous three-city strike against Saddam’s forces. Despite being warned by the CIA that Saddam's forces were anticipating the attack, Chalabi proceeded with the operation which was handily crushed. This was followed in August '96 by a second disaster when one of the Kurdish factions within the INC invited Iraqi forces into Kurdistan to help crush a rival faction also allied with Chalabi. Many of Chalabi's men were captured, tortured, and slaughtered leading the US government to evacuate seven thousand of the rest.
Chalabi and Brooke retaliated by collaborating with ABC News on a documentary that shifted much of the blame for the disaster on the CIA. CIA withdrew its support as a result, and Chalabi turned instead to the Congress. The INC set up shop in Georgetown, and Chalabi went about courting the Israel lobby. In a June, 1997 speech at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Chalabi told the audience that the Iraqi government could be replaced by one that was friendly to Israel if the US government's support for INCs efforts could be secured. Chalabi also dangled the prospect of restoring the oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa in an interview with the Jerusalem Post. Chalabi's pro-Israel statements soon caught the attention of the neoconservatives who actively started courting him. 
:As Brooke put it, “We thought very carefully about this, and realized there were only a couple of hundred people” in Washington who were influential in shaping policy toward Iraq. He and Chalabi set out to win these people over. Before long, Chalabi was on a first-name basis with thirty members of Congress, such as Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich, and was attending social functions with Richard Perle...and Dick Cheney, who was the C.E.O. of Halliburton. According to Brooke, “From the beginning, Cheney was in philosophical agreement with this plan...Wolfowitz was particularly taken with Chalabi, an American friend of Chalabi’s said.
In order to replenish his dwindling financial resources, Chalabi turned to a tactic, that Brooke describes as “naked politics”: court partisan support from the GOP by shifting the blame for INC's operational disasters on the CIA and the Clinton Administration. As a result INC could soon count Trent Lott and Jesse Helms amongst its supporters. Congressional hearings were held on the failures of the CIA, a neoconservative whipping boy since the days of the cold war, when it wouldn't endorse the neoconservatives inflated estimates of the Soviet threat. Meanwhile Chalabi made an attempt to recruit UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter to his cause, meeting him in London on January 27, 1998 at his apartment on Conduit Street in Mayfair. In the meeting Ritter told Chalabi of the gaps in the UN's investigations, which Chalabi subsequently exploited to undermine the inspection program. 
:He also told Chalabi of his suspicion that Saddam may have had mobile chemical- or biological-weapons laboratories, which would explain why investigators hadn’t been able to find them. “We made that up!” Ritter said. “We told Chalabi, and, lo and behold, he’s fabricated a source for the mobile labs.” (The I.N.C. has been accused of sponsoring a source who claimed knowledge of mobile labs.) 
The intelligence that the INC furnished on Iraq's alleged WMD program was, according to Ritter,"all crap.” On a later occasion Chalabi tried to bribe Ritter with promises of future oil contracts in return for his assistance with the regime change plan. During this period, Chalabi had also commissioned a study by retired General Wayne Downing which advocated a quixotic plan to overthrow Saddam with a limited insurgency. Downing would go on to become a prominent advocate for while serving in the future Bush administration as well as a part of the Pentagon 'message force multiplier' media scandal.
====Iraq Liberation Act====
INC's lobbying finally bore fruit when on October 7, 1998, the US Congress almost unanimously passed the Iraq Liberation Act. Drafted by Trent Lott and other Republicans, the Act was the brainchild of Chalabi, Brooke, and their congressional allies who for the first time turned “regime change” in Iraq into official US policy. In order to avoid controversy, Chalabi had pitched Iraqis themselves as agents of regime change, thereby also helping secure a $97m grant for the INC. Chalabi's plan outraged Gen. Anthony Zinni, the head of CENTCOM, who called it “pie in the sky, a fairy tale”. He warned congress that if they pressed on with the plan Bay of Pigs would turn into "Bay of Goats".
===Bush Administration===
The Bush Administration ushered in many hawks such as Paul Wolfowitz who were committed to regime change in Iraq. A White House meeting chaired by the new President George H.W. Bush on 30 January 2001, authorised the disbursement of $4 million to the INC under legislation passed in late 2000. The money was earmarked for a programme described as the "collection of informational materials." This marked a significant escalation, the first time the US had funded INC activities in Iraq since 1996.Martin Kettle, Bush funds Iraqi opposition, The Guardian, 3 February 2001.
In February 2001, an INC delegation to Washington led by Ahmad Chalabi met State Department staffers to discuss the issue of funding for the Iraqi opposition. An INC source told the Al-Zaman newspaper that the INC detected several indications that the new Bush administration was serious about confronting Saddam Hussain. The paper also reported that Lebanese executive Paul Hatta would be leading an INC-sponsored television station from London.Iraq/UK: Opposition plans satellite TV channel from London, BBC Monitoring Worldwide Media, 7 February 2001A few days later, it was reported that as well as establishing TV and radio stations, the INC would be republishing the Iraqi opposition newspaper Al-Mu'tamar.Iraq: Two opposition newspapers to be republished, BBC Monitoring World Media, 12 February 2001, based on Arabic report in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 12 February 2001.
INC personnel including Chalabi were reportedly meeting with State Department officials at the precise moment of US airstrikes on Iraq on 16 February 2001.The son claims vengeance for the father, by Ben Macintyre, The Times, 17 February 2001.The Family Business, by William Paul and Nick Peters, Scotland on Sunday, 18 February 2001Assistant Secretary of State Edward Walker reportedly told the INC delegation that the strikes were "the start of a new policy", adding "We are going to get serious with Iraq. All constraints are off."Britain urged Bush to launch raids on Iraq, by Michael Prescott and Tony Allen-Mills, Sunday Times, 18 February 2001.
Following the meeting, Chalabi said he had been promised $30 million in American aid and changes to the sanctions regime that would help increase support for his group. "Air strikes must be within a comprehensive plan to get rid of Saddam." Richard Perle said he expected a sharp increase in support for the Iraqi opposition.Britain and US ready to raid Iraq again, by Anton La Guardia and Toby Harnden, The Daily Telegraph, 19 February 2001.
In April 2001, the Iranian government allowed the INC to open US-funded offices in a plush northern suburb of Tehran. It marked the first time since the Iranian revolution in 1979 that Washington allowed government funds to be spent inside Iran.Plan resurfaces to target Saddam, by Julian Borger, Guardian, 21 December 2001.
The same December 2001 article reported that the INC worked with General Wayne Downing, a Bush counter-terrorism adviser, on a plan for the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein that at the time was being considered by the US joint chiefs of staff. The state department, the CIA and some of the Pentagon's uniformed top brass were reportedly highly sceptical of the Downing-INC plan, which called for a force of about 5,000 INC fighters crossing into Iraq from Kuwait and seizing a deserted airbase near Basra. The action would tempt Saddam to send his crack Hammurabi tank division to the south, where it would be a sitting duck for US bombers, according to the plan. Former Central Command commander, General Anthony Zinni derided the plan at the "Bay of Goats," the Guardian writes.Plan resurfaces to target Saddam, by Julian Borger, Guardian, 21 December 2001.
In the wake of September 11 Pentagon hawks eager to use the opportunity to strike Iraq turned to the INC in earnest. Already on September 20, Chalabi was making a pitch for invading Iraq at a meeting of the Defense Policy Board which is chaired by Richard Perle. According to Francis Brooke, who attended the session, Chalabi’s message, endorsed by the board, was to skip Afghanistan, and target Iraq immediately. One participant told Jane Mayer that Chalabi made a compelling case for an easy victory with "no resistance, no guerrilla warfare from the Baathists, and a quick matter of establishing a government.”
For "bureaucratic reasons" according to Wolfowitz, WMD was chosen as the casus belli everyone could agree on, and the INC was quick to the take the hint. Mayer reports:
:Francis Brooke said that nobody had ordered the I.N.C. to focus solely on W.M.D.s. “I’m a smart man,” he said. “I saw what they wanted, and I adapted my strategy"...As a result, the war was largely marketed domestically as a scare campaign, and the I.N.C. was enlisted to promote the danger posed by Saddam’s regime. Brooke said, “I sent out an all-points bulletin to our network, saying, ‘Look, guys, get me a terrorist, or someone who works with terrorists. And, if you can get stuff on W.M.D., send it!’ ” (Mayer, op.cit.)
The charge for the INC's Information Collection Program hitherto funded by the State department was taken over by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency in 2002. State Department and CIA's skepticism of the INC were overruled by Bush who sided with Cheney and the neocons. Bush and Cheney both recycled false INC claims about Iraq's alleged mobile weapons laboratories. The claims also loomed large in Powell's February 5, 2003, address to the United Nations. The source for these claims was a single source, an INC defector designated "Curveball", brother of one of Chalabi’s aides who before fleeing Iraq had been jailed for embezzlement. According to Vincent Cannistraro Curveball was handed to the German Intelligence by the INC's Aras Habib. 
In March 2002, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that "exile groups supported by the I.N.C. have been conducting sabotage operations inside Iraq, targeting oil refineries and other installations. The latest attack took place on January 23rd, an INC official told me, when missiles fired by what he termed 'indigenous dissidents' struck the large Baiji refinery complex, north of Baghdad, triggering a fire that blazed for more than twelve hours." However, Hersh added, "A dispute over Chalabi's potential usefulness preoccupies the bureaucracy, as the civilian leadership in the Pentagon continues to insist that only the INC can lead the opposition. At the same time, a former Administration official told me, 'Everybody but the Pentagon and the office of the Vice-President wants to ditch the INC.' The INC's critics note that Chalabi, despite years of effort and millions of dollars in American aid, is intensely unpopular today among many elements in Iraq. 'If Chalabi is the guy, there could be a civil war after Saddam's overthrow,' one former C.I.A. operative told me. A former high-level Pentagon official added, 'There are some things that a President can't order up, and an internal opposition is one.'"Seymour Hersh, The Debate Within, New Yorker, 11 March 2002.
Notwithstanding these concerns, Hersh reported that "INC supporters in and around the Administration, including Paul Dundes Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, believe, like Chalabi, that any show of force would immediately trigger a revolt against Saddam within Iraq, and that it would quickly expand." In December 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported that the administration of George W. Bush actually preferred INC-supplied analyses of Iraq over analyses provided by long-standing analysts within the CIA. "Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency.," he wrote. "The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq. ... Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war." 
In February 2003, as the Bush administration neared the end of its preparations for war, an internal fight erupted over INC's plan to actually become the government of Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Chalabi wanted to "declare a provisional government when the war starts," a plan that "alienated some of Mr Chalabi's most enthusiastic backers in the Pentagon and in Congress, who fear the announcement of a provisional government made up of exiles would split anti-Saddam sentiment inside Iraq."US falls out with Iraqi opposition, by by Julian Borger, Michael Howard, Luke Harding, and Dan De Luce, guardian.co.uk, 21 February 2003.
==Information Collection Program==
Much of the pro-war faction's information came from the INC despite the CIA and State Department's deep skepticism who saw the INC as a "corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else.". "The Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad", reported Robert Dreyfuss.Of the intelligence furnished by the INC Vincent Cannistraro said: "Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions." Yet most of it ended up "right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches."Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy, by Robert Dreyfuss, The American Prospect, 18 November 2002.
An investigation undertaken by the DIA has found that practically all the intelligence provided by the INC was worthless. The Radical: What Dick Cheney really believes, by Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman, The New Republic, 1 & 8 December 2003, via Information Clearing House.
Despite this, it was revealed that in March 2004, the Pentagon continued to pay the INC $US340,000 a month for "intelligence collection".Discredited Iraqi Exiles Still Land US Spy Funds, by Tabassum Zakaria, Guardian, 11 March 2004.Knight Ridder reported that the false INC intelligence fed to the US intelligence agencies was also distributed to news outlets in the United States, Britain and Australia. A June 26, 2002, letter from the INC's Entifadh Qanbar to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles appearing between October, 2001, and May, 2002 based on information provided by the Information Collection Program. The articles which made assertions about the Iraq's alleged links to al-Qaida and its WMD stockpiles relayed INC propaganda collected from “defectors, reports, and raw intelligence”. Qanbar also revealed that some of the raw information went directly to "government recipients,” including William Luti at the Pentagon, and John Hannah at the Vice-President's office. 
In March 2004, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Carl Levin (D-MI) sent requested the General Accounting Office to investigate whether the INC used State Department money to propagandize the US public or influence policy between 2001 and 2002.Chalabi: A Questionable Use of U.S. Funding, by Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, 5 April 2004, via the Internet Archive.The Senators' letter of March 3 found "troubling" the INC's use of money, pointing to the June 2002 memo to the Appropriations Committee and the "Information Collection Program." "Late last year Chalabi's Washington representative, Francis Brooke, told NEWSWEEK that State Department money had been used to finance the expenses of INC defectors who were sources for some of the listed news stories. Brooke said there were 'no restrictions' on the use of U.S. government funds to make such defectors available to the news media," Newsweek writes. Chalabi: A Questionable Use of U.S. Funding, by Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, 5 April 2004, via the Internet Archive.
INC's propaganda also made its way directly to government officials. Haideri’s lies for example found their way into an official White House study, called “A Decade of Deception and Defiance,” which was released as supporting material Bush's UNS Speech on September 12, 2002. The study boasted that Haideri “supported his claims with stacks of Iraqi government contacts, complete with technical specifications”.
===INC and the New York Times===
The most notorious story in which INC claimed it had placed its “product” was Judith Miller's December 20, 2001 front-page article in the New York Times about Adnan Ihsan Saheed al-Haideri, an Iraqi defector who claimed to have direct knowledge of twenty secret WMD sites in Iraq; he also claimed these weapons were tested on live Kurdish and Shiite prisoners. Miller had conducted her interview with al-Haideri three days after he had failed a DIA polygraph test.Iraqi exile group fed false information to news media, by Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 16 March 2004.Mayer, op cit.Miller has since admitted that INC propaganda contributed to 10 of her frontpage stories. 
However, New York Times's reliance on the INC went beyond Miller. "In an unusual arrangement", writes Mayer, "two months before the invasion began, the chief correspondent for the Times, Patrick E. Tyler, who was in charge of overseeing the paper’s war coverage, hired Chalabi’s niece, Sarah Khalil, to be the paper’s office manager in Kuwait. Chalabi had long been a source for Tyler...During the five months that Khalil was employed, Tyler published nine pieces that mentioned Chalabi." Chalabi’s daughter Tamara told Mayer that Khalil "helped her father’s efforts while she was working for the Times." This included personally commandeering a convoy of SUV's to transport Chalabi and his FEF milita from Southern Iraq after their arrival in April 2003. Tyler denied knowledge of this and Chalabi's role in her hiring. Khalil was dismissed on May 20, 2003 when editors in New York were finally apprised of this conflict of interests. William Schmidt, the associate managing editor of the Times, also admitted that the it was out of bounds.”
Another key strand in the Bush administration's case against Iraq -- the alleged link between Iraq and Al Qaeda -- also originated with the INC, including the claim that Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in April, 2001. Yet again the INC produced a defector to back these claims. INC sponsored defector Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy was the key source for a sensational February, 2002, article by David Rose of Vanity Fair that highlighted the Prague connection and made claims that Iraq was training Arab terrorists. An aide of Chalabi’s served as the translator for the defector. Most of these claims had also been repeated by another defector produced by the INC on November 12, 2001. Sabah Khalifa Khodada al-Lami, allegedly a former colonel in the Iraqi Army, claimed that Islamic militants were training at Salman Pak and that the camp was contaminated by anthrax. The accusation were made at the height of the Anthrax scare in the US.
==Iraq Liberation Action Committee==
Another potential violation of U.S. funding laws is a non-profit group set up by individuals who held senior positions with the INC called the Iraq Liberation Action Committee. The group, composed largely of Iraqi-Americans, was to lobby for U.S. action in Iraq. Knight Ridder reported in April 2004 that it "relied on private funds and was not subject to the same lobbying restrictions [as INC]. Even so, the formation of the group surprised and angered U.S. government officials, some of whom suspected it was an attempt to sidestep the lobbying restrictions."
Long-time INC representative and former Rendon Group employee Francis Brooke was listed as the group's principle founder, Knight Ridder reported. The group was "to work in support of United States and international efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq" and to help in "drafting resolutions, legislation and regulations" to advance democracy there.
Iraqi exile group may have violated rules barring it from lobbying, by Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay, Knight Ridder Washinton Bureau, 23 April 2004.
Estimates on the amount of funding the INC received from the U.S. government vary. One estimate was that between 1998-2003 it received $18 million. 
In May 2004 an unnamed INC official told the New York Times that it had received $27 million in the last four years. THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: ALLIANCES; U.S. to Halt Payments to Iraqi Group Headed by a Onetime Pentagon Favorite, by Richard A. Oppel Jr, New York Times, 18 May 2004.According to the report the U.S. government had decided that funding for the INC would end when its $355,000 per month contract for intelligence information expired on June 30, 2004.
In addition to the Rendon Group, the Burson-Marsteller PR firm has also provided public relations assistance to the INC.
==Post-Saddam Iraq==
===Free Iraqi Forces===
The INC established a militia known as the Free Iraqi Fighters which was flown in along with him on US military air transport soon as the invasion of Iraq commenced. Reporters such as Patrick Cockburn, and even some members of the INC have accused FEF of looting and robbing their way into Baghdad. An INC member told Jane mayer that FEF men also stole a fleet of SUVs belonging to the former regime and sold them abroad. Some were caught and taken to the Al Baya station; some carried false IDs. The looting has been confirmed by CPA officials, but more tellingly, hasn't been denied by Chalabi: “What war doesn’t have this? Can you guarantee that no Coalition soldiers looted anything?”
===De-Baathification===
The INC also oversaw a “de-Baathification” program in collaboration with the neoconservatives which has been characterized as little more than a sectarian targetting of Iraqi Sunnis. A former American diplomat and a former member of Chalabi’s militia told Jane Mayer that de-Baathification had devolved into the confiscation of Sunni assets, including houses that were expropriated by Chalabi’s aides. Newsweek reported that an Iraqi official claimed that half a million dollars allocated for de-Baathification had disappeared. The neocon-led Pentagon's view of INC remained favourable, nevertheles, with the DIA crediting FEF with helping capture more than half of the fifty-five Baathists placed on the Pentagon's Most Wanted list .
===Corruption===
As head of the finance committee of the Iraqi Governing Council Chalabi favoured relatives and loyalists for key positions in Iraq's financial sector. His men prevailed as the choices for oil, finance, and trade ministers, as well as the new Central Bank. These included Ali Allawi, Chalabi’s nephew; Nabeel Musawi, a former INC spokesman; Sinan Shabibi, another ally. Having failed to nominate Mudar Shawkat, his INC deputy, as Minister of Finance Chalabi instead rewarded him with a large stake in a mobile-phone contract. Investments also included stakes in the thriving private military industry; Abdul Huda Farouki, a friend of Chalabi was rewarded with major stakes in two companies, Nour USA and Erinys Iraq. Both have benefited from multi-million dollar contracts for training the Iraqi Army and for securing the country’s oil infrastructure. 
Given the INC's track record, when Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy to Iraq, was asked by the US to form an interim government he pointedly excluded from it all members of the INC. In response Chalabi first tried to browbeat the UN by threatening to reopen investigations into the Oil for Food program; he next tried to organize a coalition of powerful Shiites, called the Shiite Political Council. Chalabi has since courted clercies, and on 27 May 2004 even participated in a sit-in outside a mosque in Najaf where Moqtada al-Sadr was beseiged by US forces. Even allies were alarmed by Chalabi's sectarian politics. One told Mayer that he was "pushing his private agenda at the cost of the country’s needs.”
==Fall From Favour==
In the wake of INC's fall from favour amid espionage allegations Paul Wolfowitz tried to distance the DoD from Chalabi calling its coddling of Chalabi a "street legend". However, a prominent State Department official told Jane Mayer of the New Yorker that in numerous documents prepared by the Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans that he had seen, “Every list of Iraqis they wanted to work with for positions in the government of postwar Iraq included Chalabi and all of the members of his organization”.
==British relationship==
The Times reported in 2001 that Britain maintained periodic contact with the INC:
::But such support is largely verbal; there is no direct funding for the Opposition, although humanitarian aid is given directly for use in Iraq. Indeed, the recent legislation on terrorism makes it impossible to give logistic support, for INC military operations inside Iraq would clearly fall into the category of support for terrorism overseas, now illegal under British law.His Father's Enemy, The Times, 3 February 2001.
==People==
*Ahmad Chalabi
*Zaab Sethna - Spokesman
*Francis Brooke - Washington Representative
*Entifadh Qanbar - Washington spokesman
*Paul Moran - One of the journalists used to plant INC stories.
*Sharif Ali
*Aras Habib - INC's intelligence chief who fled Iraq before being served a warrant for passing classified US documents to Iran.
*Sarah Khalil - Chalabi's niece who worked for the New York Times in the lead up to the war. 
*Ali Allawi - Chalabi’s nephew
*Nabeel Musawi - a former INC spokesman
*Mudar Shawkat - Chalabi's INC deputy
*Eoghan Harris - "taught [Chalabi] television techniques"
===Defectors===
*Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy
*Adnan Ihsan Saheed al-Haideri
*Sabah Khalifa Khodada al-Lami
*Khidhir Hamza
*Rafid Ahmed Alwan ("Curveball")
==Affiliations==
*Kurdistan Democratic Party
*Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
*Shea & Gardner - James Woolsey's law firm, which lobbied for the INC.
==Contact==
*http://inciraq.com/(in Arabic)
Since 1996, according to Jane Mayer, INC's Washington headquarters has been situated in a million-dollar brick row house in Georgetown, owned by Levantine Holdings, a Chalabi family corporation based in Luxembourg.
==External Resources==
*Julian Borger, "Plan resurfaces to target Saddam," Guardian, December 2001.
*Nick Grace, "Radio Hurriah Axed by State Department," December 14, 2002.
*"B-M Promotes INC," O'Dwyer's PR Daily, April 17, 2003.
*"B-M Working with Bush's Hand-Picked Iraqis," Holmes Report, May 1, 2003.
*Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff, Exclusive: Cheney and the ?Raw? Intelligence, Newsweek, December 15, 2003: "A memo written by a top Washington lobbyist for the controversial Iraqi National Congress raises new questions about the role Vice President Dick Cheney?s office played in the run-up to the war in Iraq."
*Maureen Dowd, The Thief of Baghdad, New York Times, February 15, 2004: "But here's the wild thing: the propaganda program was underwritten by U.S. government funds. So Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week ? and a precious human cost. Cops dealing with their snitches check out the information better than the Bush administration did. ... Mr. Chalabi's séances swayed the political set, the intelligence set and the journalistic set. In an effect Senator Bob Graham dubs 'incestuous amplification,' the bogus stories spewed by Iraqi exiles and defectors ricocheted through an echo chamber of government and media, making it sound as if multiple, reliable sources were corroborating the same story. Rather, one self-interested source was replicating like computer spam."
*Pamela Hess, "DOD weighs future of INC-fed intel group," Washington Times, March 3, 2004: "The Pentagon and Defense Intelligence Agency are trying to determine whether an intelligence collection unit fed by the controversial Iraqi National Congress will continue beyond July 1, when Iraq is scheduled to re-assume its sovereignty. ... The intelligence community last month recommended the Iraqi National Congress' Information Collection Program continue at least until July 1 but has specific concerns after that date if the program is either continued or disbanded, according to government officials and documents. ... However, the organization is also under scrutiny on Capitol Hill for its central pre-war role in producing questionable intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction."
*Douglas Jehl, "Chalabi spies in Iraq still on US payroll", Sydney Morning Herald, March 12, 2004. (SMH article credits the New York Times and Reuters for this story).
*Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells, Iraqi exile group fed false information to news media, Knight Ridder, March 15, 2004.
*Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh, "Chalabi: A Questionable Use of U.S. Funding," Newsweek, March 27, 2004.
*Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay, "Exile group crossed line on lobbying, U.S. believes," Knight Ridder, April 23, 2004.
*"Congress Probes INC's Lobbying Effort," Democracy Now! April 27, 2004.
*Lisa Myers, "Iraq congress members under investigation. Allegations include abduction, robbery, assault, car theft," NBC News, April 28, 2004.
*Richard A. Oppel Jr, " U.S. to Halt Payments to Iraqi Group Headed by a Onetime Pentagon Favorite", New York Times, May 18, 2004.
*Douglas McCollam, "Chalabi's List of Suckers," Columbia Journalism Review (via Alternet), July 12, 2004.
*Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, "Report: Advocates of war used Pentagon ties; Ex-CIA Chief Helped U.S. Government Contact Defector," San Jose Mercury News, July 16, 2004.
*Walter F. Roche Jr. and Ken Silverstein, "Advocates of War Now Profit From Iraq's Reconstruction," Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2004.
* James Bamford, Iran: The Next War, Rolling Stone, July 26, 2006.
==Notes==
category:Iraq