Those claims helped make the case for war but have since proved groundless, and US intelligence agencies are now scrambling to determine whether false information was passed to the US with Iranian connivance.
INC representatives in Washington did not return calls seeking comment.
But Laurie Mylroie, a US Iraq analyst and one of the INC's most vocal backers in Washington, dismissed the allegations as the product of a grudge among CIA and state department officials driven by a pro-Sunni, anti-Shia bias.
She said that after the CIA raised questions about Habib's Iranian links, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) conducted a lie-detector test on him in 2002, which he passed with "flying colors."
The DIA is also reported to have launched its own inquiry into the INC-Iran link.
RSS