Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, somebody ought to call the cops. Today I am not talking about collusion, corruption and cronyism and the leaking of sensitive classified information that has irreparably damaged the national security of the United States. No, I am not talking about Scooter Libby or Karl Rove, though their involvement in outing a female CIA agent to silence her husband's criticisms of the President's Iraq policy deserves closer scrutiny.

No, I am talking about another shadowy character and administration ally, someone whose deception played a large role in leading the United States into war in Iraq. I am talking about Ahmad Chalabi. Mr. Chalabi is the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq's newly constituted government. But Mr. Chalabi also is a convicted bank swindler who, we now know, fed the Bush administration false intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and capabilities and Iraq's ties to terrorism.

Many Americans remember Mr. Chalabi as a man who convinced Vice President Cheney that the United States would be greeted as a great liberator in Iraq. Some have even said it was Mr. Chalabi who promoted the false story about Iraq's attempted purchase of nuclear material in Niger. Chalabi fed false stories about Iraq's weapons capabilities to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a story that the Times was later forced to publicly discount.

Mr. Chalabi, who supplied information to the White House Iraq working group, a mysterious cabal, as Colin Powell's former chief of staff recently said, that hijacked U.S. foreign policy and hyped the case for war in Iraq. The bottom line is that Mr. Chalabi played a central role in the orchestrated deception leading to the invasion of Iraq.

After the administration discovered that Mr. Chalabi provided false intelligence, instead of investigating, the Department of Defense attempted to prop Mr. Chalabi up as a candidate of choice in the post-war Iraq.

Keep in mind what Mr. Chalabi did next. He was suspected of leaking classified information about U.S. intelligence capabilities to Iran. He was suspected of telling the Iranians that we had broken the code by which we were learning information about their activities.

Seventeen months ago, then National Security Adviser Rice promised an FBI inquiry into who leaked information to Iran. Seventeen months ago, and yet nothing has happened. Despite the fact that Mr. Chalabi was a prime suspect, the FBI has never interviewed him. In fact, the Wall Street Journal quotes the FBI as having said they have little active interest in this matter. Little active interest in a person who is leaking intelligence material to Iran in the middle of the war in Iraq?

Just this week the administration invited this criminal to meet with the Secretary of State and maybe even Vice President Cheney in the West Wing to discuss his candidacy for the Iraq presidency in this December's election. I would be curious to learn from the President what role granting a U.S. entry visa to a man suspected of spying for Iran plays in the administration's terrorism strategy.

Mr. Chalabi's actions are an insult to every American, especially those serving in our Nation's Armed Forces, and his high-level visit to the United States is an additional affront. Chalabi's crimes cannot go unanswered. He belongs in jail for his misdeeds. Instead, he gets a White House photo-op.

As the Senate concludes its investigation into the administration's use of false and misleading intelligence to make the case for war, no such inquiry would be complete without Mr. Chalabi's testimony under oath. While he is sashaying around the streets of Washington, D.C., the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee may want to issue a subpoena for his presence. He has offered to testify, but no intelligence agency of the United States has interviewed him, nor has the FBI, as we learned today.

He should be detained in this country until he gives that testimony. I know I speak for all Americans when I say that our idea of democracy is not propping up a bank swindler, kidnapper and extortionist whose lies and deceptions contributed to the 14,000 U.S. soldiers injured and over 2,000 killed in action and is an intractable quagmire with no end in sight. Americans deserve the truth about the Bush administration's manipulation of intelligence to justify this tragic war.

Calling the cops to arrest Mr. Chalabi, while he is here, so he can be interrogated, would be a good beginning to understand how extensive the manipulation, how false the evidence was, that caused the President to take us to war and which was championed by the Vice President and the President and the cabal to try to justify to the American citizens the reason for this war.

Mr. Speaker, call the cops. Mr. Chalabi should not be allowed to run free on the streets of this Nation's capital.

(By Scot J. Paltrow)

As Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi arrives this week in Washington for talks, there is little sign of progress in a Federal investigation of allegations that he once leaked U.S. intelligence secrets to Iran.

More than 17 months after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice publicly promised a full criminal inquiry, the Federal Bureau of Investigation hasn't interviewed Mr. Chalabi himself or many current and former U.S. government officials thought likely to have information related to the matter, according to lawyers for several of these individuals and others close to the case.

The investigation of Mr. Chalabi, who had been a confidant of senior Defense Department officials before the war in Iraq, remains in the hands of the FBI, with little active interest from local federal prosecutors or the Justice Department, these people said. There also has been no grand-jury involvement in the case.

The investigation centers on allegations that one or more U.S. officials in early 2004 leaked intelligence to Mr. Chalabi, including the fact that the U.S. had broken a crucial Iranian code, and that Mr. Chalabi in turn had passed the information to the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The assertions about Mr. Chalabi's involvement came after U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted a cable from the station chief back home to Iran, detailing what the chief claimed was a conversation with Mr. Chalabi about the broken code.

Former intelligence officials said such a leak could have caused serious damage to U.S. national security. The broken code had enabled U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor covert cable traffic among Iranian operatives around the world. The encrypted cable traffic was a main source of information on Iranian operations inside Iraq. The leak also threatened U.S. efforts to monitor any Iranian steps to develop nuclear weapons. And there was concern that the disclosure could prompt other countries to upgrade their encryption, making it more difficult for the U.S. to spy on them.

Mr. Chalabi has strongly denied the allegations. He once was a close Bush administration ally and a key proponent of the Iraqi invasion, though he has more recently appeared to fall from American favor. Before the war, during his long period as a prominent Iraqi exile, he also cultivated close ties to the government in Iran, which was his ally in opposing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Just this weekend, Mr. Chalabi made a trip to Tehran to visit Iranian government leaders.

The handling of the Chalabi investigation so far stands in contrast to the aggressive inquiry conducted by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of intelligence agent Valerie Plame's name, which led to the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff.

Questions about the progress of the Chalabi investigation also follow the FBI's disclosure last week that it had closed an investigation into forged documents purporting to show Iraq had sought uranium ore from Niger. The Niger claim set off an intense intelligence debate, which was at the center of the leaking of the intelligence agent's identity.

Whitley Bruner, a former longtime undercover Central Intelligence Agency official in the Middle East who has followed Mr. Chalabi's career closely since 1991, said that, in contrast to Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation, the Chalabi leak inquiry ``just sort of disappeared.''

FBI spokesman John Miller strongly denied that the Chalabi investigation has languished. ``This is currently an open investigation and an active investigation,'' he said, adding that ``numerous current and former government employees have been interviewed.''

Mr. Miller said that, because the investigation is an active one, he couldn't discuss specific individuals nor comment on how the inquiry is being conducted. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Mr. Chalabi's lawyer, Boston attorney John J.E. Markham II, said neither the FBI nor Justice Department ever responded to an offer to have Mr. Chalabi come to Washington to answer law enforcement questions and aid in the investigation. Mr. Markham made available a copy of a letter he said he had sent on June 2, 2004, to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller. It categorically denied that Mr. Chalabi had leaked any U.S. intelligence. And it stated ``Dr. Chalabi is willing and ready to come to Washington, D.C. to be interviewed fully by law-enforcement agents on this subject and to answer all questions on this subject fully and without reservation.''

Mr. Markham, a former Federal prosecutor, said that, ordinarily in a leak investigation, ``the first thing you would do would be to get the tippee,'' the person to whom the information was leaked, ``in there and say `Who talked to you?' '' But, he said, ``That never happened.''

The FBI's Mr. Miller said he wouldn't comment on Mr. Chalabi but said the FBI, in general, interviews witnesses when an investigation indicates it is best to do so, not necessarily at the beginning of an inquiry. He added, ``The fact that this person or that person has or hasn't been interviewed yet is just not material to whether there's an active investigation.''

One likely focus of FBI inquiries would be a small group of people in the Pentagon and White House who had frequent contact with Mr. Chalabi and also probably knew the closely guarded secret of the broken code. Interviews indicate that many of these individuals haven't been questioned by the FBI.

Among the officials with whom Mr. Chalabi at one time had close ties, for instance, was Douglas J. Feith, who until earlier this year was an undersecretary of defense and headed the Pentagon's powerful office of policy and planning. In an interview, Mr. Feith said he has never been questioned by the FBI or federal prosecutors in connection with the investigation and that if others had been, he was unaware of it.

Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said in an emailed response to questions that he had no knowledge of the FBI or federal prosecutors having questioned current or former Defense Department officials. ``I don't know anything about a [Department of Justice] investigation in this matter,'' Mr. Di Rita said.

Mr. Chalabi had been considered a trusted ally by influential figures within the administration, but last spring those ties appeared to have ruptured. On May 20 of last year, Iraqi police backed by U.S. troops raided Mr. Chalabi's headquarters, searching for evidence of corruption and leaked American intelligence.

Since then, however, the Bush administration has become more open to dealing with Mr. Chalabi again, spurred on by his rise in the current Iraqi government, the possibility that he might become prime minister and his current control over, among other things, Iraqi oil production.

Mr. Chalabi's visit to Washington this week is his first since the leak allegations. He is scheduled to meet with Treasury Secretary John Snow and with Ms. Rice, now secretary of state. He also is to give a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Senate Democrats have been pressing for an investigation into the role Mr. Chalabi played in drumming up support for a war to depose Mr. Hussein. They also are critical of Mr. Chalabi because of alleged corruption; in 1992, he was convicted in absentia by a Jordanian court of having embezzled $288 million from a bank at which he was managing director. He has strongly denied the corruption allegations.

Spokesmen for both Mr. Snow and Ms. Rice said they were meeting with Mr. Chalabi, despite past events, because he is a powerful government figure in Iraq. State Department Iraq adviser James Jeffery said Mr. Chalabi ``is deputy prime minister of a critically important country at a critically important time, he was democratically elected, and it's on that basis that we see him.''