Chalabi: From prize to pariah

By Bridget Kendall BBC diplomatic correspondent

The change in Ahmed Chalabi's fortunes is startling.

Profile: Ahmed Chalabi

In January, he was still so close to the Bushes he sat behind Laura Bush at the President's State of the Union Address.

Now his Baghdad home has been raided, it seems on US orders, amid whispers from Washington that he all along duped the Americans by spying for the Iranians.

All lies, Mr Chalabi says, and a smear by the CIA.

So what's at the bottom of it all?

In the run up to the Iraq war, his exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, was indeed, apparently, an important source for intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

Intelligence source

Not documents but defectors were offered up, most notably the engineer who claimed that Saddam Hussein had mobile labs for chemical or biological weapons.

An allegation used by Colin Powell in his speech making the case for war at the United Nations and which he now says he bitterly regrets quoting.

To be fair, Mr Chalabi's was not the only exile group furnishing intelligence.

The Iraqi National Accord came up with the contact on the famous 45 minutes claim, for instance.

"His fortunes appear to mirror the quiet but dramatic changes in Washington's Iraq policy"

There were of course other sources as well - satellite imagery, communications intercepts, and even the unaccounted for stockpiles listed by UN weapons inspectors.

If the information was dodgy, says Mr Chalabi, the Americans should have checked it out more thoroughly.

On the face of it, nothing singles out Mr Chalabi's ties with Iran either. His contacts were not a secret.

He is not nearly as close to Tehran as another exile group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose headquarters were based in Iran till the war ended.

Classified information

What is new though, is the alleged concern focusing on Mr Chalabi's recent access to US classified material in Baghdad, and whether that information might have reached the Iranians.

But in the fog of whispered claim and counterclaim, one thing stands out: Mr Chalabi's seesawing political fortunes appear to mirror the quiet but dramatic changes in Washington's Iraq policy.

Computers and papers were seized in the raid on the Chalabi residence

When he flew back into Iraq just over a year ago with the help of US special forces, he soon established himself as a figure of considerable influence.

He was a member of the Interim Governing Council, head of its Economic and Finance Committee, in charge of the extensive de-Baathification committee and even hailed as a possible future Iraqi President.

Sidelined

But as problems in Iraq have multiplied - the escalating violence, the disastrous impact of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, the struggle of arranging a credible handover - the US has been forced to adjust its thinking.

It has handed to the UN the unenviable job of finding a new caretaker government.

It has invited back former Iraqi generals to help solve the Falluja standoff.

It has conceded that the new caretaker government will have much wider powers than first envisaged - "full", not "limited" sovereignty.

And Mr Chalabi has quite clearly been sidelined.

Even to his former backers in the Pentagon, it seems, Iraq's most famous exile is no longer seen as part of the solution, but part of the problem.