by TChris

New information about the possible misdeeds of Ahmad Chalabi comes on the heels of an earlier report that Chalabi told officials in Iran that the U.S. had broken the secret communications code used by Iran's intelligence service. Newsweek reports that Chalabi "is suspected of leaking confidential information about U.S. war plans for Iraq to the government of Iran before last year’s invasion to oust Saddam Hussein."

There was never any reason to trust the self-interested Chalabi, but that didn't stop the Bush administration from paying him to lie -- payments that stopped only after Bush and Cheney learned that Chalabi had compromised U.S. codebreaking. The administration never should have trusted Chalabi, but now the question is: who in our government is so untrustworthy as to pass along sensitive information to him?

U.S. political activists close to Chalabi have told reporters in recent days that Chalabi learned about the codebreaking in Baghdad from a drunken U.S. official.

That doesn't narrow the field much, so the investigation continues.

Law-enforcement sources indicated that the American investigation will likely focus on whether sensitive information might have been leaked to Chalabi by officials in either the Pentagon or the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

The investigation may ask whether "Chalabi had collected and maintained files of potentially damaging information on U.S. officials with whom he had or was going to interact for the purpose of influencing them." So who did Chalabi intend to blackmail?

Not surprisingly, the administration is distancing itself from its old friend Chalabi, with Condoleezza Rice remarking that "it’s no secret that the relationship with Ahmad Chalabi has been somewhat strained of late" -- yeah, no secret there -- and the President saying that "he had only met the Iraqi very briefly a few times." Hey, he hardly knew the guy. At least that what Bush hopes voters will believe by November.