The Road to the Iraq War | 1. The Exile

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Slow Burn – "The Road to the Iraq War" | Ep. 1: The Exile

Host: Noreen Malone (Slate Podcasts)
Original Episode Date: April 21, 2021

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Overview: Main Theme & Purpose

This episode kicks off Slow Burn’s fifth season, exploring the pivotal events and personalities that culminated in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The first episode, “The Exile,” zeroes in on Ahmed Chalabi: a charismatic, controversial Iraqi exile whose relentless ambition and manipulation helped lay the groundwork for regime change in Iraq. Through first-hand interviews, archival audio, and expert analysis, the show delves into Chalabi’s background, his entanglements with U.S. policymakers and intelligence agencies, and how his efforts set the stage for one of the most consequential wars of the 21st century.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing Ahmed Chalabi and His Resolve

• [01:46] Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi aristocrat exiled since his youth, dedicated his life to deposing Saddam Hussein:
  • Quote: “Saddam is an insult to my being. He’s an insult to my country. He’s an insult to our history, to our culture.” (Ahmed Chalabi, 01:46)
• Chalabi's self-image: modeled on transformative leaders (e.g., Gandhi, Mandela, de Gaulle).
• Noted as both brilliant and a "bullshit virtuoso"—master manipulator, but with fervent conviction.

2. Early Coup Attempts and CIA Collaboration

• [05:27] Chalabi forms the Iraqi National Congress (INC) with CIA funding, envisioning it as a government-in-waiting.
• [03:55] CIA's ambivalence: They provided Chalabi with funds mainly for anti-Saddam propaganda, not expecting real revolution.
  • Quote: “...in those days, we had a lethal finding against Saddam Hussein. That means we could use lethal force... From a Hollywood standpoint, I call it a license to kill.” (Bob Baer, CIA operative, 03:41)
• [08:25] Chalabi used U.S. resources to mount his own coup attempts, circumventing CIA oversight.

3. The 1995 Failed Coup and Its Fallout

• [09:08–15:42] In 1995, Chalabi coordinated with Kurdish fighters, supposed dissident Iraqi generals, and even courted Iranian backing—on the basis (mostly a bluff) that the U.S. was committed.
  • Forgeries and bluffs (e.g., the NSC "assassination team" letter) convinced some partners, but not Washington.
  • The operation, lacking true U.S. backing, failed disastrously: Saddam’s forces retaliated, many fighters were killed, and Chalabi became a liability in intelligence circles.
  • Quote: “Covert action by the CIA is just that. It is completely unreliable. They’re prepared to burn your house to light their cigarette.” (Ahmed Chalabi, 15:00)
• [16:29] The CIA severed ties: issued a “burn notice”—Chalabi’s intelligence was officially deemed not credible.

4. From Pariah to Power Broker: Rebranding in Washington

• [17:10–32:55] Despite banishment by U.S. intelligence, Chalabi worked American media and think tanks:
  • Courted neoconservatives (e.g., Bernard Lewis, Paul Wolfowitz) who saw him as a modernizing, democratic hope for Iraq (31:12).
  • Press coverage depicted him as a humanitarian hero betrayed by cynical U.S. agencies.
  • Notable tactic: Framed Saddam’s atrocities in language resonant with American ideals of democracy and justice (34:53), targeting both hawks and liberals.

5. The Iraq Liberation Act and Washington’s Embrace

• [39:40–41:19] In 1998, Chalabi lobbied for, and Congress passed, the Iraq Liberation Act—requiring U.S. policy to seek regime change in Iraq and funding opposition, including the INC.
  • Quote: “The evil of Saddam must be confronted with the strong arm of justice, not with the limp handshake of appeasement.” (Ahmed Chalabi, 39:40)
• Chalabi’s allies: Democrats, Republicans, foreign policy hawks, and idealists—all seeking different outcomes but finding Chalabi’s narrative compelling.

6. Personal Ambition, Shiite Identity, and Entitlement

• [20:08–21:16] Chalabi’s background as a Shiite from one of Iraq’s wealthiest families, and the trauma of exile, fueled his fierce drive for power and revenge.
  • Quote: “Ahmed was raised in this environment of power brokering... This included plots to overthrow neighboring regimes. It was plots to bribe people. It was schemes to confer power on some people and crush others.” (Rich Boonen, biographer, 21:16)
• Chalabi’s personal ambition to lead Iraq was central to his mission—he saw himself as uniquely entitled and equipped for national leadership.

7. Final Reflections on Chalabi’s Legacy

• [45:42–46:08] Chalabi returned to Baghdad after Saddam's fall but never became Prime Minister. He played a major, controversial role in post-invasion Iraq, was accused of spying for Iran (which he denied), and eventually died in Baghdad.
  • Quote: “I played a role in getting rid of the most severe and fascist, racist, totalitarian dictatorship that ever beset an Arab country.” (Ahmed Chalabi, 45:42)
  • Counterpoint (Rich Boonen, 46:08): “He also shares responsibility for the death and destruction that followed.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Saddam is an insult to my being. He’s an insult to my country. He’s an insult to our history, to our culture.”
  —Ahmed Chalabi (01:46)

• “In those days, we had a lethal finding against Saddam Hussein... I call it a license to kill.”
  —Bob Baer (03:41)

• “Covert action by the CIA is just that. It is completely unreliable. They’re prepared to burn your house to light their cigarette.”
  —Ahmed Chalabi (15:00)

• “He parlayed his debacle in Iraq into a narrative. As an Iraqi freedom fighter who was betrayed by the CIA.”
  —Rich Boonen (32:21)

• “To American ears, it all sounded very Jeffersonian.”
  —Rich Boonen, on Chalabi discussing democracy (34:53)

• “The evil of Saddam must be confronted with the strong arm of justice, not with the limp handshake of appeasement.”
  —Ahmed Chalabi (39:40)

• “If Iraq didn’t have oil at all, I don’t think anybody would have been interested then or now.”
  —Rend Al Rahim (37:26)

• “He had a sense of entitlement, if you know what I mean... his was personal.”
  —Rend Al Rahim (43:15–43:49)

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |:----------|:--------------| | 01:46 | Introduction of Ahmed Chalabi—his mission and character | | 05:27 | Formation of the Iraqi National Congress and CIA funding | | 09:08–15:42 | The failed 1995 coup attempt, CIA/deep state machinations | | 16:29 | CIA issues “burn notice” against Chalabi | | 17:10–32:55 | Chalabi’s public relations campaign and cultivation of U.S. elites | | 39:40 | Chalabi testifies before U.S. Senate, pushing for overthrow | | 40:50 | Iraq Liberation Act passes, INC government funding restored | | 45:00–46:08 | Chalabi’s final years and legacy in post-Saddam Iraq |

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Tone & Language

The tone is investigative, layered, and reflective, balancing deep skepticism with empathy for the ambitions and traumas driving its principal character. The host and interviewees often oscillate between marveling at Chalabi’s charisma and dissecting his opportunism, capturing the complicated emotional and political history that fed into war.

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For New Listeners

This episode offers essential context for understanding both the personal ambitions that can drive international events and the manner in which U.S. foreign policy can be steered by compelling, but not always trustworthy, actors. If you want to know how a largely exiled, scandal-tinged operative could manipulate world powers and become pivotal in dragging America into Iraq, this is the place to start.

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Next on Slow Burn: The focus shifts to the post-9/11 period and the escalation of fear, policy, and war planning in Washington.

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Transcript

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

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[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

A man cave, but the wife doesn't like it. What if I called it a woman cave?

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Okay, so let's not do that. But add some relaxing lighting and a comfy Ikea Hofburg Ottoman. And now it's a cozy retreat. Nice.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

A cozy retreat, man. Cozy retreat, sir.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Okay, find your big dreams, small dreams and cozy retreat dreams in store or online at ikea. US dream the possibilities On March 19, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. This season of Slow Burn is about the events and arguments that led up to that day. So now you know where we're going to end up. But where do we start? George W. Bush made the call to launch the invasion, but it wasn't what he'd come into office to do. Bush, like any president, was influenced by people in his administration. Some of them had been spooked by 9 11. Others had been pushing to get rid of Saddam for a lot longer. You'll hear about all of that later in this series, but in this episode, I'm going to tell you about someone else. His name was Ahmed Chalabi, and deposing Saddam Hussein was his life's work.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Saddam is an insult to my being. He's an insult to my country. He's an insult to our history, to our culture.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi was an aristocrat, an Iraqi exile who was brilliant and charismatic. He was also a bullshit virtuoso with a core of absolute conviction. You might have heard of him. He played a very public role in the push for war after 9 11. But what you might not know is that he tried to start another war with Iraq a few years earlier, and he got weirdly close to pulling it off. So let's start there. In 1995, the US had defeated Saddam in the Gulf War four years earlier, but he remained in power. He had a big army, and he was still a brutal dictator.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Saddam is in the Mussolini Hitler category. He's a gambler, he's a killer, and he's somebody who wants to make himself the dominant power.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

The US didn't want Saddam to stay in charge, but he wasn't high on their priority list. Foreign policy problems like this one, hard problems with no obvious solutions, tend to get kicked over to the CIA. And that's what happened to Iraq in the 90s.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

I was in the Directorate of Operations, that's Bob Baer. And that means essentially you're sent overseas to recruit sources with access to clandestine information or, you know, secrets of a foreign government and you get them to steal those secrets. You're basically hired as a thief.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Bear is the kind of spy you see in the movies. Action oriented, kind of a maverick. In fact, George Clooney played a character based on him in Syriana. When the Gulf War was over, Bear went on a mission to Kurdistan. It's a semi autonomous region north of Baghdad. The CIA didn't give him tons of resources. The office he worked out of was kind of a backwater. But he did have one important tool.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

In those days. We had a lethal finding against Saddam Hussein. That means we could use lethal force when it was occasioned to overthrow him. From a Hollywood standpoint, I call it a license to kill.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

The Clinton administration had inherited that lethal finding, but they weren't in a huge rush to act on it. Bear's bosses in the CIA believed that if the US kept the pressure on Saddam, he'd eventually self destruct. Baer didn't totally agree. The way he saw it, Saddam was a bad guy and he, Bob Baer, had the legal authority to do something about it. So from an isolated office in Kurdistan, he ended up trying to overthrow one of the most notorious dictators in modern history. Kurdistan was the perfect place to find allies for a revolution. The Kurds land is divided up among a rock, Iran, Syria and Turkey. No one wants to give up their piece of Kurdistan because it's got oil. So the Kurds are ethnic minorities in four different nations. And in Saddam's Iraq they were targeted brutally.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Hoisted into the air at the end of a rope, Rafiq had his legs beaten with rubber truncheons.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Third day my arms were broken. This year my arm was broken.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

By the early 1990s, Kurds had been tortured and executed by Saddam's regime in massive numbers. And Kurdish nationalists were long past ready to rise up. When Bob Bair showed up in Kurdistan, Ahmed Chalabi was already recruiting Kurdish nationalists for his own campaign to overthrow Saddam.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

He was probably one of the more charming people I've met in the world and one of the most intelligent people I'VE met.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi was a sophisticated businessman with the face of a character actor. His family had fled Iraq when he was a teenager in the 1950s, but now he was back in Kurdistan. To help Iraqis imagine a better Future, he had $4 million from the CIA, money he used to launch an opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress. He imagined it as a kind of government in waiting. Ahmed Chalabi was not a humble man. His Iraqi National Congress was modeled on the Indian National Congress and the African National Congress, groups associated with Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. He also liked to compare himself to Charles de Gaulle. Chalabi was an unlikely candidate to lead a popular uprising. He was back in Iraq for the first time in decades. And Kurdistan, where he was based, wasn't where he was from. Chalabi had grown up in Baghdad, the nation's most cosmopolitan city. Now he was holed up in the country's most impoverished region. But Chalabi wasn't the kind of person to live a hardscrabble life. The electricity in Kurdistan wasn't great, so he got a private generator, which he used to watch Jeremy Irons and Brideshead Revisited. He also had a private chef who made him Peking duck.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

And we made furniture locally, designs made by people like Frank Lloyd Wright and Macintosh.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

That's Chalabi talking to his biographer, rich Boonen in 2008. Boonen spoke to Chalabi for more than 60 hours over several years and used those interviews to write his book, Arrows of the Night. The tapes have never been aired before.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Fighting Saddam does not mean you have to live bad food or live in shabby surroundings and have dirty bathrooms. Certainly not.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

When the CIA gave Chalabi $4 million. They didn't think they were financing a revolution. They mostly wanted him to produce anti Saddam propaganda to build opposition to the regime. Chalabi didn't take that job seriously. The Iraqi National Congress was supposed to be publishing a local newspaper, but its office was empty. The paper didn't exist. Chalabi himself was hard to keep tabs on. The CIA gave him an encrypted phone, but he hacked it so they couldn't listen in on him. Still, no one at the agency put a stop to any of this. The Americans just wanted some kind of opposition to Saddam, and Chalabi gave them that. So, despite his many shortcomings, the CIA thought of Chalabi as an asset. What they didn't realize is that he was using them.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

We never worked with the CIA on providing them with intelligence on Iraq. We never did because that was completely outside what we were doing.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

You were just doing it for yourself.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Yes. And that was, that's what annoyed them.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

All that time he was being paid by the CIA, Chalabi was putting together his own scheme. He was going to aus Saddam Using the CIA's money, resources and manpower. His plan involved a group of generals in Saddam's army who Chalabi said were ready to seize power. He introduced one to Bob Bear.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

Chalabi brings him to me and says, here, talk to this guy. He can change the regime. So we sit down and he walks me through this secret committee in Baghdad of Sunni generals who are ready to move. He gives me the names, I trace them. They're real people. There's a possibility they could be dissidents.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

The rest of the pitch from Chalabi went like the disaffected Iraqi generals would join forces with the Kurdish nationalists who'd been brutalized by Saddam and were desperate to get rid of him. The generals and the Kurds would get help from Iran, which had its own long standing beef with Saddam. Chalabi said this supergroup could take down the Iraqi dictator if the US would give them a hand. What would come after that?

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

For Shalabi, removing Saddam was only half the goal.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

That's Rich Boonen, Shalabi's biographer, talking to me last year.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

The other half of the goal was to become the leader of Iraq himself. He believed in his heart of hearts that he was the most qualified Iraqi to lead Iraq into the modern world.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Bear wrote to CIA headquarters to tell them about the disaffected generals who might rise up. His boss wrote back, this is not a plan. So not an encouraging answer. But Bear heard what he wanted to hear. No one had literally said, don't try to start a coup. Baer did wonder if Chalaby was playing him, but he put that thought out of his mind. This was the chance to do something big. So there they were, Bob and Ahmed, two men with the same absurdly ambitious goal and the same taste for rolling the dice. In March of 1995, Shalabi told Bear that everything was a go. He had an Iraqi general who was ready to defect, which would set off that military revolution from within. And the Kurds and Iranians, Chalabi claimed they were in too. Bob Bear.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

So what he has to do is, it's almost like Three Card Monte is con us all into doing something so that we're drawn into this conflict so we have to continue it until we get rid of Saddam Hussein. And that's the only way he gets.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Back to Baghdad, the generals, the Kurds, Iran. None of them were about to take action unless Chalabi could convince them the US Was on board. That's where Bob Baer came in.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

He was very encouraging and helpful in organizing this.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

So why do you think he was doing it?

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Because he felt that it could succeed. Succeed in a way that he would get recognized for it.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

When Chalabi met with the Iranians, he got Bear to walk by with an AK47 so they'd see Chalabi had American friends. Bear had agreed to this part, but he hadn't been briefed on Chalabi's next move. According to Bayer, Chalabi had also forged a letter from the National Security Council saying a team of Americans was on its way to assassinate Saddam. Chalabi left that letter out on his desk while he went to take a phone call. Chalabi denied forging that letter, but the Iranians reported seeing it. And somehow the trick worked. The Iranian government believed the US Was backing Chalabi's coup. The actual position back at CIA headquarters was. Was extremely different.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

Chalabi comes to me and says, well, what's Washington's verdict on this? Do they want to pursue this or not? And I said, look, Ahmed, I'm going to be frank with you. No one really cares much about Iraq or you or anybody else. They don't take this seriously. They're not answering my cables, and I've sent in six of them.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Maybe the CIA assumed that Bear wouldn't launch a coup d' etat without explicit permission. But that's not how Bob Baer operates. He interpreted an absence of a no as a yes. Chalabi kept pushing forward, too. He figured he could force everyone's hand by just putting something on the calendar. March 4, 1995.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

And so that's when he gets on the phone and calls Tehran and said, now it's serious. A national security assassination team is going to murder Saddam Hussein. And he's telling the Iranian national security advisor this. You guys can get on board now, or the train's leaving without you. And they start moving tank units and airplanes to the border for their own invasion of Iraq.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Nobody in the White House had been given any advance notice about this coup. A few days before the action was set to start, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs called the President's national security advisor. He said there was unexplained troop movement on the borders of Iraq. There were armies on full alert.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

All hell is breaking out. We can see this. There's going to be World War Three.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Eventually, the National Security Advisor made the connection to Bob Baer. After months of silence, he finally got a reply to all those cables. The action you have planned for this weekend has been totally compromised. We believe there is a high risk of failure. Any decision to proceed will be on your own. Bear still had time to back out. In fact, one of the Kurdish leaders did, and so did Iran. But Bear and Chalabi, they didn't. Less than 36 hours later, they were watching the Kurdish revolutionaries take on the Iraqi army.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

All hell broke loose across northern Iraq. I mean, you should. It was like fireworks on the 4th of July. Helicopters. And seriously, I must have looked like Forrest Gump in my REI jacket. An AK over my shoulder.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Bear and Chalabi had thousands of Kurdish soldiers on the front lines, but they were up against a much bigger force. The fighting lasted for four or five days, but absolutely nothing. When, as Chalabi said it would, no US forces came to their aid. The Iraqi generals never defected. Saddam had gotten tipped off about the attempted coup. The revolution never had a chance. Chalabi blamed the Americans.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Covert action by the CIA is just that. It is completely unreliable. They're prepared to burn your house to light their cigarette.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

When I talked to Bob Baer about this whole episode, he sounded wistful. He wonders what might have been if Washington hadn't left him hanging out to dry.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

We could have gone to Baghdad with just the Kurds because the Iraqi army was in that bad a shape. They were out of money, they were starving. But how to convey that to Washington? What would happen if we had gone farther south toward Baghdad? I simply don't know.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Maybe it could have worked if regime change had come from the inside, led by the Iraqi army, if the US had joined in with the full might of the American military, or even just with more than one guy named Bob. But that's not what happened. Saddam stayed in power, and Bear was whisked back to America. His CIA career was basically over. Ahmed Chalabi tried to keep going, but the year after the coup attempt, Iraqi forces attacked his headquarters in Kyrgyzstan. Chalabi himself was in London at the time. 200 of his men were executed by firing squad, and Saddam's soldiers took computers containing the INC's files. The CIA had never really trusted Chalabi, but now it was clear he was a liability. Rich Boonen.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

The CIA completely cut ties with Ahmed and issued what's called a burn notice. And that meant that no one in the CIA could have any dealings with Chalabi. And no Intelligence from Chalabi was to be deemed credible. Ahmed was dead to the CIA.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

But Chalabi didn't just skulk away. He wouldn't give up as long as Saddam was still in charge. He kept lobbying the Americans, and soon enough, he found people who took him seriously.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

Factories on wheels and on rails.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Simply stated, there is no doubt that.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. This is slow Burn Season 5, the Road to Iraq. I'm your host, Noreen Malone. In retrospect, the 2003 invasion of Iraq seems like an obvious mistake. When the occupation officially ended nearly nine years after the tanks rolled into Baghdad, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had died as a result of the war. And Iraq was still not a functioning democracy. ISIS moved into the power vacuum. The Middle east is less stable now than it was before the US Invaded. And here in the States, thousands of young enlisted people are dead. Tens of thousands more were wounded, and the US spent almost $2 trillion. Knowing what we know now, it's easy to be smug about what the backers of the war got wrong. I was in high school at the time, and I opposed the war on instinct. But lots of people who were following the news much more closely at the time supported it, and not just Republicans. All kinds of people thought that going into Iraq was the right thing to do. In March 2003, 3/4 of Americans were pro invasion. Why was that? What did they think they understood about Iraq and the people who made the decisions? When they talked about a bright future for the Iraqi people after Saddam, Were they dreamers or hucksters? How did they ignore every sign that they were marching into a catastrophe? And how did Ahmed Chalabi end up getting what he wanted at such a huge cost? This is episode one, the Exile. Ahmed Chalabi's family was one of the most prominent in Iraq. To understand them, you need to understand the origins of their country. First, Sunnis and Shiites. For almost as long as Islam has existed, the religion has been divided into two main factions over an argument about who is the true successor to the Prophet Muhammad. Much of the Middle east is Sunni, but a slim majority of Iraqis are Shiite. 2. The country we now know as Iraq dates back about a hundred years to when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War. When the Western powers divvied up the empire's lands, they didn't pay much attention to ethnic and religious borders. The British and French drew a line down the middle of Sunni Arab territory and declared one half Syria. The other half was part of Iraq. The British installed a Sunni king to rule the mostly Shiite people who lived there, the Chalabi family, they were part of that Shiite majority, Rich Bonin.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

They were not observant, but they culturally and psychologically identified as Shiite. And as such, they were keenly aware of how the Shia majority in Iraq were basically the stepchildren of that country and all of Arabia. And it was something that was a source of pain and, frankly, resentment.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

The Chalabis themselves were far from marginalized. Ahmed was born in 1944. By the time he was a teenager, his father, a businessman, was the country's richest person, the Rockefeller of Iraq. In family photos, the Chalabis are stylish, Westernized, dressed like they're going to a garden party. At the family's country house, Ahmed had his own personal swimming pool. Chalabi's father was good friends with the Crown prince of Iraq. He paid off the prince's gambling debts. And when the prince became the king, Chalabi's dad became president of the Senate and of the Iraqi Stock Exchange. He owned much of the country's grain, dates, cement and cotton.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Ahmed was raised in this environment of power brokering. And he would say to himself, he told me, you know, what would I do if I were in my dad's shoe? How would I handle this? And, you know, this included plots to overthrow neighboring regimes. It was plots to bribe people. It was schemes to confer power on some people and crush others.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

In 1958, when Ahmed was 13, the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown by the military. Everything changed for the Chalabi family.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

All the people that Ahmed grew up with, the king of Iraq, the prime minister of Iraq, they were taken out, beaten, stabbed, murdered, hung by the neck from treetops, you know, in the public areas of Baghdad. I mean, it was bloody. It was angry.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

The family fled to England, and something like a billion dollars of their fortune disappeared. Chalabi's father cried every day.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

He was living in an apartment in London, small apartment. He had these pictures, art pictures of his children. And I actually saw him cooking rice. It was a very strange experience for him to cook his own food, my father cooking rice.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

The Chalabi still had some money, which they used to send Ahmed to a fancy English boarding school as a student. He used the skills he'd learned at his father's knee, bribing the prefects with money and cigarettes to get them off his back. He Taught himself calculus and moved to the US to attend mit. He also got obsessed with history, especially stories of regime change, like how Lenin took down the Russian government from exile. As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Chalabi bought a 1966 Ford Thunderbird. He took a road trip through the southern United States on the path of General Sherman's march to the sea. But he was always thinking about Iraq.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

He made a pledge to himself to rid the shame of exile by preparing himself personally to help Iraq overturn the revolution and get himself back to Iraq.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

In the 1960s, Iraqi politics were extremely messy. The fall of the monarchy kicked off a series of coups. In the end, the Ba'ath Party seized control in majority Shiite Iraq. The Ba' Athists were mostly Sunnis. In 1968, a 31 year old Saddam Hussein became the new President's deputy. Saddam took a lot of power. He nationalized the country's oil and invested the proceeds in healthcare and infrastructure. He beefed up the military with a chemical weapons program and eventually a nuclear weapons program. Ahmed Chalabi was still in the US at this point. The more he heard about what was happening back home, the more horrified he became.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

They practiced torture openly. They advocated an ideology, a racist ideology. They started the war of the curse. It was a war of national eradication.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi wasn't going to just stand on the sidelines. After graduate school in the late 60s, he moved to Kurdistan for a brief time. There he joined a group of freedom fighters. Saddam hussein spent the 70s consolidating his power. In the summer of 1979, he ousted his boss and became the President of Iraq. Saddam killed hundreds of his political enemies and became known as the Butcher of.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Baghdad in the Middle East. Today, the new President of Iraq continues to purge his opponents. Saddam Hussein was present as 21 senior officials, including the Deputy Prime Minister were executed by firing squads.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Saddam's first big foreign policy move was to invade Iran. Good evening.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Not since the 73 Mideast war has there been such a threat to stability in that volatile region as now.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Iran and Iraq today dangerously escalated months.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Of sniping along their 720 mile border.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Unleashing massive air, sea and artillery attacks. Twice.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

In a lot of ways, this fight resembled World War I. Trench warfare, machine guns, mustard gas. Iraq used chemical weapons against the Iranians, including civilians. Over eight years, more than a million people died and no one won. Starting in the early 80s, the US supported Saddam with money, weapons and intelligence. The Reagan administration believed Saddam was the lesser of two evils. That it would rather do business with a murderous tyrant than with the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran who'd held 66Americans captive. In the middle of the Iran Iraq war, Iraq's Kurds launched their own fight for independence. Saddam responded with bombs, gas and torture. Tens of thousands of Kurdish Iraqi civilians were buried in mass graves. All the while, the United States kept sending aid to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

Rumsfeld's unexpected trip to Iraq is the.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

First visit there by a high ranking.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

US official in several years. But it is by no means the first time the Reagan administration has tried to improve relations with the Baghdad regime.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Of President Saddam Hussein.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Ahmed Chalabi spent the 1970s working as a math professor in Beirut. But by the 1980s, he was done with the academic life and living in a very 1980s way. He ran a bank in Jordan which made him rich again. Chalabi funneled some of that money to Shiite opposition groups in Iraq. He also built a huge mansion, hired bodyguards and hung out with a Jordanian power elite. He liked to wear ascots and Nehru jackets. Chalaby's career in finance ended in scandal. The Jordanian government accused him of embezzling more than 250 million from the bank. Chalabi knew the authorities were watching his house, so he threw a party as a diversion and snuck out the back with one of his favorite rugs. A member of the Jordanian royal family escorted him to the Syrian border. Back in Jordan, Chalabi was convicted in absentia. He never did any prison time, but now he was in exile twice over.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

I had a terrible crisis when everybody died in exile all the time. My father and my mother when they died, because I just hated for somebody from my family to die away from Iraq where we couldn't come and bring them back to be buried in Iraq.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

By 1990, Chalabi was living in London and desperate to find a path back home. The best way to do that, in his view, is get the United States to take out Saddam Hussein. That was a tall order. The US had been sending aid to Iraq and no one was paying much attention to Saddam. Until suddenly all of that changed.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Good afternoon, everyone. Well, at this hour, Iraq remains in firm control of the tiny oil rich country of Kuwait. And there is no indication that those Iraqi troops, some 100,000 of them, will be leaving soon.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Saddam invaded Kuwait for a simple reason, oil money. He had big debts from the war with Iran.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Saddam's invasion broke the bond between the US foreign policy interests and Saddam. Now there was an opening to change US foreign policy and the US Realized more importantly, it had to tilt away from Saddam, that he was an uncontrollable threat.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Operation Desert storm, launched in January 1991. Just two hours ago, Allied air forces.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. These attacks continue as I speak, just.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

100 hours after the American ground campaign began. The US and its allies had gotten Saddam out of Kuwait, but he was still in control of Iraq. Bush considered pressing on into Baghdad and deposing Saddam, but he decided against it. Chalabi saw this as a huge missed opportunity, but he didn't give up. The alliance between Saddam and the US Government had been broken. The American public knew who Saddam was and they knew he was a bad guy. So Chalabi went to work. After the Gulf War, Ahmed Chalabi went to Washington and New York and started introducing himself around. His goal was to convince influential Americans that the US should depose Saddam. It turned out that a lot of powerful people with diverse but overlapping agendas were buying what Chalabi was selling. His first big breakthrough came in the spring of 1991. He got invited to speak at the Council on Foreign Relations, a big time think tank. He presented himself as a freedom fighter and a humanitarian. Among the people in attendance was Bernard Lewis, a history professor at Princeton. Lewis thought the west and the Muslim world were in a clash of civilizations. He believed one way to resolve that clash was for enlightened, educated Arab Muslims to modernize their nations. Rich Bonen again.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

When Professor Lewis listened to Ahmed, he said, ah, this is our man. This is the answer. This is the person we can work with to bring the Middle east into the modern age.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Lewis was part of a group of foreign policy thinkers known as the neoconservatives. They believed democracy combined with American military power was a kind of global cure all. Lewis began introducing Chalaby to this crew, which included people like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl. Chalaby was getting a reputation in Washington as a guy who was plugged into a rock. That reputation is why the CIA called him, to see if they could work together. You've already heard how that worked out. The alliance with Bob Bear, the spectacular failure of the Bear Chalabi coup, and the Byrne notice, the official declaration from the CIA that Ahmed Chalabi was not to be trusted. But that burned notice didn't stop Chalabi. He still had relationships with Bernard Lewis and other important figures in the foreign policy world. And he still had the Iraqi National Congress, the group he'd founded with money from the CIA. At this point, the INC had Just four staffers left. Chalabi moved the operation to a townhouse in Georgetown. They started working the phones. In another life, you could see Chalabi as a Silicon Valley founder, failing, pivoting, telling a story about how he was still going to change the world.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

He parlayed his debacle in Iraq into a narrative. As an Iraqi freedom fighter who was betrayed by the CIA, I had no.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Constituency in America, no constituency at all. So first we had to publicize the cause. What is the cause? The cause is these people are trying to fight tyranny of Saddam. They are there fighting, and the United States had let them down.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi found a receptive audience in the American media. He'd been cultivating the press for decades, cozying up to foreign correspondents in Lebanon and Jordan. He was close with Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post and Judith Miller of the New York Times. Christopher Hitchens would later dedicate a book to him. In 1997, ABC News did an hour long special on Iraq hosted by Peter Jennings. Ahmed Chalabi was the hero of that story. The CIA was the villain.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

In northern Iraq today, there is still a campaign going on to get rid of Saddam Hussein. It has been going on since the.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

End of the Gulf War.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

The people who persist in this struggle do so in the name of democracy, but they are fighting alone today. And this is the story of how they were abandoned.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

It's easy to forget this now with everything that's happened since. But the US Government's tolerance of Saddam wasn't noble. And Ahmed Chalabi's push to publicize conditions in Iraq was not purely cynical. Yes, Chalabi had an obvious personal agenda. He wanted to get back to the country where his family had once been rich and powerful. He also wanted to run that country. Don't forget, but that ABC News report and the story Chalabi was telling in Washington, they were basically accurate. The Kurds really were abandoned and people in Iraq were suffering. Talebi must have genuinely believed he could save his homeland. He could have spent the rest of his life in London or Los Angeles, playing tennis and eating in expensive restaurants. And to be fair, he managed to fit in plenty of that kind of stuff. But most of the time he was hustling to get rid of Saddam and to get back what he believed had been stolen from his family. Chalabi wrote op EDS in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He compared the Iraqis rising up against Saddam to the Jewish resistance fighters of World War II. He also talked about democracy and really.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

What Ahmed wanted was Shia rule. Ahmed knew that the Shias are the majority in Iraq, and if a democracy is defined by majority rule, then he was all for democracy as long as it meant the Sunnis would be thrown out of power and the Shia were taken over. But, you know, to American ears, it all sounded very Jeffersonian.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

His neoconservative friends were thinking even bigger. They wanted Iraq to be the seedbed of democracy in the Middle East. Chalabi could talk that talk. Here's Asla Aydin Tasbosh, a Turkish journalist who got to know Chalabi in the early 90s.

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

It had never been tried before. Ahmed was the first person that I heard who strongly defended the notion of an Arab democracy, that Arabs should and can govern in a democratic and pluralist system.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi argued that Westerners who didn't believe Iraq could be a democracy were effectively racist.

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

At the time, the alternative to this narrative on democracy was continued dictatorships. And here you had someone who accused sort of Western, his Western interlocutors challenging them on their preconceived notions about what Arabs can do and cannot do.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

The neocons weren't the only group Chalabi was courting. He was also working on hawkish senators like John McCain and Joe Lieberman. These guys wanted a new American ally in the Middle East. A free Iraq would be a new seat of Shiite power in the region, one friendlier to America and to Israel than Iran was. Rend Al Rahim worked with Chalabi in the Iraqi National Congress. She'd later become the Iraqi ambassador to.

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

The U.S. idealism works in America if it happens to fit in with US national interests. And I clearly remember him constantly warning everyone in the INC in the opposition that what we have to keep in mind is US national interest and that we had to frame our approach based on US national interest. I don't think he ever said, we'll.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Give you our oil, but he said, we've got it.

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

Oh, yeah, that's very important. I mean, look, if Iraq didn't have oil at all, I don't think anybody would have been interested then or now. This is a country that has possibly the second highest oil reserves in a region that is the primary producer for the world.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

So that was what Chalabi was selling to foreign policy hawks. Deposing Saddam would be a way to promote both American values and American interests. But Chalabi was also building support among liberals who were more focused on Saddam's atrocities. Here he is again, talking with Rich.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Bonen now, the very liberals who flocked to your cause in those days.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

They didn't flock to my cause. Well, they flocked to their cause, which is American civil rights. America doesn't treat people like that. It's not my cause, it's their cause.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

The people Chalabi won over were Republicans and Democrats, realists and idealists. But they all had something in common. They loved to talk about big ideas. They were opinion journalists, fellows at think tanks, or sometimes congressmen. They talked about stuff like, what's the United States role in the world? How can we bring peace to the Middle East? If a dictator is abusing or killing his people, do we have the obligation to intervene? Those are heady questions. And Chalabi had a suitably bold that fixing Iraq would fix the whole Middle east, at least from an American point of view. A lot of the big ideas crowd liked that answer. The people who knew the ins and outs of the region, desk officers of the State Department, foreign service officers, they were much more skeptical. Many of them found Chalabi's arguments ridiculous. But Chalabi didn't care. He wasn't talking to them. By the late 90s, Saddam Hussein was getting aggressive again. One worrying he stopped letting United nations weapons inspectors into Iraq. In March 1998, Republicans in the Senate convened a hearing on the idea of overthrowing Saddam. Ahmed Chalabi was asked to testify, and he really went for it.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Iraq has so much oil that most of the country is still unexplored. The enormous wealth, this enormous wealth, this enormous potential, is the birthright of the Iraqi people. It has been stolen from them by a tyrant. The evil of Saddam must be confronted with the strong arm of justice, not with the limp handshake of appeasement.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi pushed for legislation known as the Iraq Liberation Act. It called for freeing the country from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. And it funded groups committed to a democratic transition, groups like Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The act passed with unanimous support in the Senate. Just two years earlier, the CIA had issued its burn notice certifying that Chalabi was not to be trusted. Now with the Iraq Liberation act, the US government was back in the Chalabi business. Congress allocated 97 million in Defense Department resources to Iraqi opposition groups, including the INC Rend Al Rahim.

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

Again, the Iraq Liberation act said, this Congress believes that the Iraqi regime must be removed and that the INC is a good vehicle to help in its removal. That's very potent.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

And it also represented confidence in Ahmed as a leader of the inc right of course.

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

Of course. Yes. Absolutely.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Right.

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

Yeah.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi was now, for some Americans, the face of his native country, the good Iraqi, a clear alternative to Saddam. After Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, Chalabi was invited to speak and schmooze at an American Enterprise Institute forum in Beaver Creek, Colorado. It's the kind of conference where no press is invited, a place where the world's most powerful conservatives get together to talk. Frankly, to be honest, it's a bit of a conspiracy theorist fantasy scenario. Chalabi chatted with Donald Rumsfeld, who told him a story about meeting Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. He also had a conversation with Dick Cheney, the former Secretary of defense under George H.W. bush and now CEO of Oil and gas company Halliburton.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

What did he ask you about? What Saddam. Possibility of changing the situation. What could you do? Took very brief, long conversation, 15 minutes. And it wasn't a meeting to discuss plans.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Right.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

It was a meeting to see if I was an asshole or a credible person.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Right. And you passed the test.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

Sure.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Right.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

George W. Bush was sworn into office in January 2001. Dick Cheney was his vice president. The day after the inauguration, a group of influential foreign policy veterans gathered at the home of Richard Pearl. Many of them had worked under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. bush. Paul Wolfowitz was there. So were Doug Feith, John Hanna, and Zalme Khalilzad. The group was mostly neoconservatives. Almost all of them got jobs in the new Bush administration. The exception, Ahmed Chalabi. The group had their eyes on a different job for him, the same one Chalabi wanted for himself. Do you think that he believed he would be prime minister in a democratic Iraq?

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

Oh, yes.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Tell me more about that.

[Asla Aydin Tasbosh / Rend Al Rahim (Iraqi Ambassador)]

Well, I mean, he had ambitions for Iraq. He had plans, he had strategies. We're going to do this and we're going to do that, and you don't talk like that unless you see yourself in a position of authority. He had a sense of entitlement, if you know what I mean. But, you know, many of us felt we had been robbed, and we had a sense of entitlement in the sense that we were entitled to have our country back. But his was much more, if you want.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

If you see what I mean, his was personal. Yeah. In the spring of 2003, Chalabi went to Iraq for the invasion. Rich Bonen remembers talking to him about what he saw there, the brutal effects of the Saddam years.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

He went to this mass grave where people were digging through the dirt, you know, using Their bare hands and shovels, looking for their loved ones, digging up bones. They were digging up body parts, you know, a chest, a foot, black and gold slippers. And Chalabi was sitting there watching it, observing it in horror. To him, he said, it looked like as seen out of hell. And this was, to me, always represented the complexity of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I mean, Saddam was truly evil.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi moved back onto land his family had owned before 1958. As you'll hear in a later episode, he would play a crucial part in assembling support for the war and in the post invasion decision making. But he never became the Prime Minister of Iraq. Later, he fell out with the US Government when he was accused of spying for the Iranians, which he denied. In 2015, Chalabi died of a heart attack. He was 71 years old. He had spent decades plotting to get home. Thanks to the Americans war, he got his wish. When he died, Chalabi was living in Baghdad. His body is buried in the Chalabi family vault.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

My legacy in terms of the history.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

Of Iraq is this.

[Ahmed Chalabi]

I played a role in getting rid of the most female and fascist racist, totalitarian dictatorship that ever beset in Arab country.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Chalabi did play a role in getting rid of Saddam, but he also shares responsibility for the death and destruction that followed.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

As he said to me, the neoconservatives in Washington may be discredited, but here I am in my home in Baghdad. Saddam is gone and I am home.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Next time on slow burn. In September 2001, terrorism and the Middle east were suddenly on everyone's priority list. And then a dangerous white powder showed up in the mail.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

The fear ramped up to an amazing level.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

I said to one of my colleagues, I just spilled white powder all over myself.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

We really had no plans for responding.

[Rich Boonen (Biographer)]

To a biological attack on our homeland.

[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

Slow Burn is a production of Slate Plus, Slate's membership program. Slate plus members get bonus episodes of Slow Burn every week, where we'll go behind the scenes into making the show and air clips and interviews that we couldn't fit in. Here on this week's bonus episode, you'll be hearing more about Ahmed Chalabi, his personal background, his relationship to the press, and how he influenced those around him. Head over to slate.com slowburn to sign up and listen now, it's only a dollar for your first month. We couldn't make Slow Burn without the support of Slate plus, so please sign up if you can. Head over to slate.com slowburn Slowburn is produced by me, Jason De Leon and Sophie Summergrad with editorial direction by Josh Levine and Gabriel Roth, production assistance from Margaret Kelly. Our mix engineer is Merritt Jacob. Brendan Angelides composed our theme song. The artwork for Slow Burn is by Jim Cook. Special thanks to Jared Holt, June Thomas, Derek John, Joshua Keating, Seth Brown, Megan Kallstrom, Rachel Strom, Chow Tu, Asha Soluja, Katie Rayford, Rich Bonen and Avi Zentelman. Thanks for listening. The new year brings new health goals and wealth goals.

[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

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[Narrator/Host (Noreen Malone)]

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[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

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[Bob Baer (CIA Operative)]

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