BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Wednesday, June 02, 2004
WHY ALCOHOL AND NEOCONSERVATISM
DON'T MIX. So who was the drunken neocon who blurted to Ahmad
Chalabi that the United States had broken Iran's secret code?
According to today's New York Times story
on how Chalabi allegedly came to learn about this intelligence
coup:
American officials
reported that in the cable to Tehran, the Iranian official
recounted how Mr. Chalabi had said that one of "them" - a
reference to an American - had revealed the code-breaking
operation, the officials said. The Iranian reported that Mr.
Chalabi said the American was drunk.
Chalabi has been accused of then
turning over the secret to Iranian officials, as grotesque a breach
of security as can be imagined.
Here
is what the Washington Post says:
The FBI is investigating
an intercepted Iranian message that alleges Iraqi exile leader
Ahmed Chalabi told Tehran officials that the United States had
broken Iran's secret code, U.S. officials said.
The message alleges Chalabi said
he had been told about the code-breaking by a drunken U.S.
official, one senior Bush administration official said.
Josh Marshall all
but names a suspect, but I
would need my own secret decoder ring to figure out whom he's
referring to:
I'll try not to be too
coy. There are a number of folks who could fit that bill.
But for anyone who's followed this story, there's one guy who's
just got to jump right to the top of the list: an expert on Iran
who is extremely close to Chalabi, served as his civilian
Pentagon handler for some time in Iraq after the war, and is known
for comparing Chalabi to Mohammed and other equally august
worthies.
In April, Marshall had
this
to say about Chalabi's declining fortunes:
There are still more than
a few of the Chalabi crowd here in DC who persist in calling this
charlatan the "Leader of Free Iraq", as they did for last several
years or 'the greatest Arab since Mohammed' as one of his
acolytish handlers often refers to him. (Believe me, I'm not
making this stuff up.)
Last August, Marshall
wrote,
"There's another neocon at DOD who, I'm told, has often called
Chalabi the most important Muslim since the Prophet Mohammed." But no
name there, either.
Media Log seeks enlightenment. If
Marshall has ever named his suspect, drop me a line at
dkennedy[a]phx.com.
posted at 9:01 AM |
comment or permalink
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
