Editorial: A mistake in trusting a charlatan

Friday, May 21, 2004 | 5:41 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

May 22 - 23, 2004

Thursday's raid in Baghdad on Ahmad Chalabi's home and the offices of his Iraqi National Congress give credence to the numerous articles and opinion pieces written over the years that portrayed him as a morally bankrupt, self-serving charlatan. The raids, led by U.S. troops and Iraqi police, seem to confirm that the Bush administration is now beating a hasty retreat from its long-heralded view of Chalabi as a man of honor and truth, a man worthy of leading the Iraqi people.

This view was not unanimous, as the State Department under Colin Powell and many agents in the CIA have long distrusted Chalabi. But Chalabi caught the ears of people who counted -- President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. They eagerly paid him and his INC (a coalition of anti-Saddam Iraqis) nearly $40 million over the past two years for intelligence on Iraq.

Chalabi's now discredited information -- principally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that there were links between Saddam and al-Qaida, that U.S. troops would be joyfully greeted as liberators -- was used to justify war. After ousting Saddam, the Pentagon and White House installed Chalabi on the Iraqi Governing Council and began grooming him as the country's new leader.

Chalabi's star has now fallen, but the damage has been done. The Bush administration's championing of Chalabi as a savior when in fact he had no credibility has led to many of our troubles in Iraq. Chalabi, 60, left Iraq as a child, went to college in the United States, and grew wealthy as a businessman, albeit a wanted one. He faces a prison sentence in Jordan, where he was convicted of embezzlement, theft and other charges relating to a bank he ran.

The Chalabi story is more proof that President Bush and the influential members of his administration had preconceived notions about Iraq and used unreliable people and faulty information to bolster those notions.