Washington: With no clear picture on when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will wrap up his investigation of the leak of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame, or what additional actions he will take, the White House is quietly making plans in case top political adviser Karl Rove is forced to resign from his post. After considering several alternative names, including former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, former congressman Vin Weber, Washington super-lobbyist Wayne Berman and GOP strategist Mary Matalin, President Bush has apparently settled on a surprise choice: Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi.
“We all know what the president’s problem is,” said a senior White House official. “He is at rock bottom in his political standing and in terms of his credibility. A majority of Americans no longer believe he is honest and ethical. Who knows better how to get out of a hole like that than Chalabi?”
Another White House aide familiar with the president’s thinking echoed that sentiment. “Chalabi also had his credibility shattered and his standing destroyed after Saddam was toppled, and his information proved to be faulty or made up. Not only that, he was charged with fraud and murder by an Iraqi special prosecutor. And look where he is now—Deputy Prime Minister, feted by the White House and all of official Washington, even a candidate for prime minister. Even Bill Clinton, who’s now embraced like a son by Bush 41, didn’t achieve a resurrection like that.”
Administration sources acknowledge that making Chalabi a senior White House aide would be a challenge. “Yeah, he’s not an American, but show me where in the Constitution it says a staff assistant to the president has to be a citizen,” said a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s office. “Anyway, he doesn’t need Senate confirmation.”
The bigger challenge would be convincing Chalabi to leave his post in Iraq. “He won’t be elected prime minister, we’ll see to that,” said a senior intelligence official.” So he’ll be looking for something better. The question is whether we can find a way to pay him so that he can live in the manner he is accustomed to.”
Several sources in the CIA said that the agency and the White House are engaged in top secret negotiations, where the White House would stop its sniping at the agency in return for the CIA using one of its dummy corporations to funnel the same payments to Chalabi that he got before the Iraq invasion. “Actually, we haven’t disbanded the entity that Valerie Plame worked for; maybe we could just use that,” mused one official.