Reply #76: Yes. Chalabi was under CIA house arrest last May. [View All]

[leveymg]

The reason given was that they suspected him of corrupt trading in goods in Iraq and of passing information on to Iran. But, I believe the real meat of the matter is this:

In late 2003 and into the Spring of 2004, the FBI and CIA had confirmed the line of authorship for the forged Niger Yellowcake documents. Those were traced from Cheney's office back to the Pentagon Office of Special Plans (OSP) which obtained them after Michael Ledeen, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin met in Rome in December 2001 with Manoucher Ghorbanifar. Chalabi, along with Ledeen and his old CIA and Iran-Contra figure Dewey Claridge and another former CIA officer, are now accused of forging the documents.

As a result, the OSP was closed down in late 2003. Special Prosecuter Partrick Fitzgerald was appointed on December 3, 2003. Larry Franklin was arrested in the OSP-AIPAC spy case on May 4, 2004, and Chalabi was detained later that same month. Ledeen and Clardidge remains at large, but has been implicated in the plot by former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vince Cannistraro and others.

The circle is almost squared.