Pentagon Funding Phony Intelligence

Just days after CIA director George Tenet told Congress about his multiple interventions to correct false and misleading statements by the Bush administration prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, American taxpayers learn the Pentagon is channeling $340,000 per month for "intelligence collection" to Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress – the organization responsible for providing Vice President Cheney and other administration officials with sham intelligence. The New York Times reports the government's own reviews show that much of the intelligence information provided by Chalabi’s group was misleading and even falsified. The CIA cut off the Iraqi National Congress in 1995, yet the Pentagon continues to fund the group and grant the organization special access to its own Defense Intelligence Agency.

• The Iraqi National Congress supplied fabricated and deceptive intelligence information prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In Senate testimony early this week, Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of defense intelligence, admitted the Iraqi National Congress provided information that "was either fabricated or embellished." The National Intelligence Council determined the group's intelligence was useless, and the DIA's own staff designated defectors from the group as willful fabricators or embellishers of intelligence critical of Saddam Hussein.
• Despite proven deceptions, the Pentagon continues to lavishly fund the Iraqi National Congress with taxpayer dollars. Knight-Ridder reported last month that the Pentagon continues to funnel huge amounts of money to the Iraqi National Congress despite multiple government reviews showing that much of the group’s intelligence information is bogus.
• The Bush administration is circumventing the CIA by relying on the intelligence advice of known fabricators. The Bush administration talks a big game about streamlining intelligence, but continues to allow the Pentagon to use a group of known deceivers from Iraq for information. Amazingly, the CIA – the nation’s chief intelligence operation – must ask the Pentagon for permission to interview informants from the Iraqi National Congress and has been denied custody of important Iraqi documents seized by the group in the aftermath of the war.

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