csua.org/u/7dr -> www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/international/middleeast/20CND-CHAL.html?hp
"My house was attacked," Mr Chalabi said during a televised news conference in Baghdad. "We avoided by a hair's breadth a clash with my guards." Witnesses said the raiding party involved about 100 people, including officials they believed to be from the FBI and the CIA American soldiers were clearly in view in the area afterward. A spokesman for the United States occupation authority acknowledged that there was American involvement in the operation but asserted that it had been planned and led by the Iraqi police. "It was an Iraqi-led investigation, it was an Iraqi-led raid, it was the result of Iraqi arrest warrants," Dan Senor, the chief spokesman for L Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, said. Mr Senor asserted that Mr Bremer "did not know the operation was occurring today" and was notified only after it had been completed. Still, with Iraq under the command of American civilian and military authorities in the absence of an Iraqi government, it seemed unlikely that the Iraqi police would have mounted such an operation against Mr Chalabi, a member of the interim Iraqi Governing Council and until recently a favored ally of the Bush administration, without the knowledge, consent and a significant level of participation by American officials. Mr Senor did say that the raids had been aimed at "individuals" who work for the Iraqi National Congress, Mr Chalabi's group, although he said the operation had nothing to do with investigations into the oil-for-food program, one of the reasons offered by Mr Chalabi. Reporters who entered the office compound after the raid found a scene of destruction furniture overturned, doors broken down, documents strewn across the floor and a framed photograph of Mr Chalabi smashed. Aides to Mr Chalabi said members of the raiding party had helped themselves to food and beverages from the refrigerator. Mr Chalabi himself held up a framed picture with its glass cracked the work of the raiding party, he said and accused American soldiers and Iraqi police officers of ransacking and "vandalizing" his office. Mr Chalabi asserted that the American occupation authorities had ordered the raid, saying they were angry about his recent criticism of the coalition's administration and Washington's plans for the transition back to Iraqi governance. He also cited his differences with American officials over an investigation into corruption in the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq, and over how much power the Iraqis would assume when the country regained sovereignty on June 30. "When America treats its friends this way, then they are in big trouble," Mr Chalabi said. "My relationship with the Coalition Provisional Authority now is nonexistent." According to Mr Chalabi's aides, the raiders were looking for two men close to the Iraqi politician, one of whom is Mr Chalabi's security chief and presides over a vast intelligence network. Whatever their purpose, the raids illuminated a huge rupture in what had been the Bush administration's most important personal and political relationship in Iraq. Mr Chalabi, a longtime exile leader and now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, played a crucial role in persuading the administration that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power. But he has since become a lightning rod for Bush administration critics, who say the United States relied too heavily on him for prewar intelligence that later proved faulty. In recent weeks, the relationship further soured as Mr Chalabi openly criticized Mr Bremer and advocated a more expansive definition of the sovereignty that Iraq will assume on June 30, including full Iraqi control of its armed forces and oil revenue.
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