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Introduction

By August 2003 the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority had begun a covert effort to recruit and train personnel with the disbanded Iraqi intelligence service to help identify resistance to American forces. By that time, Iraqi officials said that dozens, possibly as many as a few hundred, former staff had been recruited. The intelligence service known as the Mukhabarat was the primary but not the only target for the US effort.

The Czech Republic is to assist Iraq in establishing its interior ministry. Iraqi authorities had requested this assistance from Prague since the Czech Republic had experience in undergoing a transformation from a totalitarian regime to a democracy. Czech experts will thus not only be involved in the process of training policemen and investigators but will advise Iraq on structural changes at the ministry.

In the fall of 2003 Iraqis requested the assistance of the United States in establishing an intelligence service capability, and the US is assisting them with their request. The United States government is assisting in that effort. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan confirmed reports on 11 December 2003 when asked to comment on a Washington Post article reporting that the Central Intelligence Agency is helping set up an Iraqi intelligence service inside of Iraq.

The primary mission of that intelligence service will be to provide information to combat terrorism inside Iraq. This is all part of our larger effort to continue working with the Iraqi people to turn more and more responsibility over to the Iraqi people for security in their own country. So that's what that is. But they had requested our assistance. The United States government is assisting in that effort, at the request of the Iraqi people.

Iraqis continue to become more and more involved in their own security, from patrolling the streets of Baghdad and other cities, to protecting critical infrastructure, and, most importantly, protecting their fellow citizens from the terrorists who want to return Iraq to the days of a very brutal regime, which will not happen.