ARAB-US RELATIONS - June 2 - Chalabi's Links With Iran.

In a closed-door briefing to Congress, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says CIA Director George Tenet will oversee an inquiry into Chalabi's intelligence activities. Other government officials say the FBI began its own investigation about four months ago into whether Chalabi had leaked US intelligence to Iran, and if so, who provided that information. Chalabi denies he had betrayed the US to Iran. (The growing furore over Chalabi has once again exposed the deep rifts within the Bush administration over the war and its conduct. If Chalabi is found to have given Iran sensitive information, important figures in the administration who had backed him as a future leader of Iraq could be tarnished by association. For this reason, Bush critics are not confident the CIA or the FBI will be either swift or thorough in their investigations. Chalabi has had a long association with neocon "hawks" in Washington - notably Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Wolfowitz's deputy Douglas Feith. But Chalabi lost credibility with the CIA and the State Department during the Clinton administration, even as Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, giving funding to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi's supporters say the CIA is waging a vendetta against Chalabi, searching for a scapegoat for its own failure to provide accurate intelligence on Iraq's WMD. Ms Rice told US networks she did not know the truth about reports that Chalabi had told Iranian intelligence in Baghdad the US had cracked their code for communications. The Pentagon confirmed last week that its Defence Intelligence Agency had cut off a $340,000 monthly stipend to Chalabi's INC in May, citing the June 30 handover of sovereignty and denying the move was related to allegations of false intelligence about WMD. But Tenet has resigned as CIA director).