US-Funded INC Faces GAO Probe For Propagandizing

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The controversial Iraqi National Congress will be the subject of a probe by Congress' General Accounting Office for using U.S. taxpayer money to convince U.S. citizens to support an Iraq invasion, according to Knight Ridder reporters Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay. The group, headed by Ahmed Chalabi, set up the Iraq Liberation Action Committee, a non-profit front group that was not subject to the same lobbying restrictions as the INC. Longtime INC representative Francis Brooke is named as ILAC's principal founder. State Department officials say the INC, which received $18 million in U.S. funds between 1998-2003, violated an agreement that they wouldn't spend the money "attempting to influence the policies of the United States Government or Congress, or propagandizing the American people." Strobel told Democracy Now! that the INC in June 2002 sent a memo to the Senate Appropriations Committee boasting that their efforts had resulted in 108 news stories on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. It turns out, however, most of the defectors INC provided to reporters as sources for their stories were fabricators.