This week the New York Times reported that the CentralIntelligenceAgency(CIA) had once hired Blackwater, a private-security contractor, in connection with a plots to assassinate al-Qaeda operatives.
It also blamed some of the problems at Abu Ghraib on "the interrogation practices of other government agencies" - a term used by the Pentagon for the CentralIntelligenceAgency(CIA).
In 1981, Reagan appointed Casey as CentralIntelligenceAgency chief, and he became the first CIA director to be granted Cabinet-level status, unfettered access to the president and a huge say in the actual conduct of foreign policy.
While the Pentagon has backed Mr Chalabi, and air-lifted him into southern Iraq, both the State Department and the CentralIntelligenceAgency(CIA) have severe doubts about the exile (who left Iraq in 1958 at the age of 13), even though he helped lead an aborted CIA-sponsored plot to overthrow Saddam in the mid-1990s.