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The United States is attempting to rehabilitate former Iraqi intelligence officers who had served in the regime of deposed President Saddam Hussein, reports the Geostrategy-Direct intelligence newsletter.
Scores of former officers are being rehabilitated and employed by U.S. military intelligence and the CIA in Iraq. According to Western intelligence sources, the recruitment was launched after the U.S. intelligence community determined it did not have enough of its own assets in Iraq.
The Iraqi intelligence agents, including former senior officers, have been assigned a number of tasks.
The first is to help in the search for weapons of mass destruction as well as the hunt for Saddam himself. Many of the officers have contacts within Saddam loyalist strongholds in Sunni towns north of Baghdad.
The Iraqi agents have also been entrusted with monitoring the emergence of Islamic fundamentalist movements in both the Shiite and Sunni sectors. The CIA is concerned over rising influence of Iran and Saudi Arabia in Iraq, the sources said.
The Iraqi agents have been identifying emerging Sunni and Shiite leaders and their aides.
U.S. officials are said to be wary of the relative quiet in the Shiite sector and fear that an Iranian-organized national resistance network, based in Najaf, is being organized.
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