The Iraqi who sold his life to the Americans

[TeeYiYi]

The Iraqi who sold his life to the Americans

Peter Beaumont reports from Baghdad on the intelligence battle in the streets

Sunday June 20, 2004
The Observer

A muscular man in his mid-thirties, Waleed was the cousin of an Iraqi who helped The Observer earlier this year by giving directions to the scene of a terrorist attack.

Now Waleed is dead; gunned down in the street as he took his car to be repaired because he was unmasked as a spy for the Americans.

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The intelligence operations of the CIA and MI6 are only possible because of men such as Waleed - who know from the graffiti on walls that the penalty for 'spies and agents' is certain death. Yet it has been a deeply troubled operation, more remarkable for its failure to prevent a string of high-profile bomb attacks and assassinations and inability to break up the resistance than for any success.

It has failed even though the CIA station in Iraq, according to best published estimates, is 500-strong in a mission originally planned to be 85-strong. The biggest CIA operation since Vietnam has been reinvigorated by the replacement of the station chief, following concerns that vital intelligence in the war against the terrorists was not being scooped up.

Much more: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1243075,00.html

TYY