Politics As Usual

[Not Me]

• Spy code secrets betrayed
  
  NEW YORK - Former United States ally Ahmed Chalabi told Iran the United States had broken secret communication codes used by Teheran's spy service, the New York Times reported.
  
  The paper quoted unnamed US intelligence officials as saying Chalabi, an anti-Saddam Hussein Iraqi exile who has now fallen out with Washington, had betrayed "one of Washington's most valuable sources of information about Iran".
  
  It was widely reported last month, after the Bush Administration cut off funding for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, that he had given American secrets to Iran.
  
  On its website the New York Times gave new details. The paper said the Bush Administration had asked news organisations to delay publishing specifics, citing national security concerns. It withdrew the request yesterday.
  
  "American officials said that about six weeks ago, Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's ministry of intelligence and security that the US was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service," the Times said.
  
  It said the Iranian official in Baghdad sent a cable to Teheran, using the broken code and describing his conversation with Chalabi.
  
  "That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the US, tipped off American officials to the fact that Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation," the paper said.
  
  The cable said Chalabi had received the code information from a "drunk" American. The FBI was trying to establish what information Chalabi had given to Iran and who told him the code had been broken.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydispl...bsection=world