Ex-CIA Chief Joins Defense Team for Iraqi Dissidents

Denouncing a “stain on the honor of this country,” former CIA Director R. James Woolsey was formally added Friday to the legal team representing six Iraqi dissidents whom the U.S. government is trying to deport as security risks.

The nation’s former top intelligence official, now an attorney in Washington, met with the six men at the Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center in San Pedro and presented each with a copy of the Koran. Afterward, Woolsey said the six appeared “calm and business-like” and excoriated the secret nature of the proceedings against them.

“In this country, we need to go the extra miles to ensure that people are dealt with fairly,” Woolsey told reporters outside the INS facility on Terminal Island.

A federal immigration judge in Los Angeles ordered the six deported earlier this month as “security risks to the United States,” although the basis of that ruling remains off-limits even to defense attorneys. FBI agents provided classified testimony against the men.

U.S. officials are thought to believe that the six men may be double agents working on behalf of the Iraqi regime.

The men have rejected such a notion, which was also repudiated Friday by Ahmad Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, a CIA-backed opposition group.

“These men are freedom fighters who deserve to be liberated,” Chalabi said after meeting with the men and Woolsey.

The defense team is hopeful that Woolsey, with a high security clearance, will be able to review the secret evidence, or at least summaries of the material. But there is no guarantee.

A decision on whether Woolsey will be privy to the evidence will be made once a formal request is received from the defense, said Carole Florman, a Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington.

The use of such secret testimony--barred in criminal trials--is permitted in certain immigration proceedings. Civil libertarians are challenging the practice in federal court.

Woolsey joined other defense attorneys in stating that the men face certain death if returned to Iraq. The six were all involved in efforts to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, defense attorneys say, and were part of a U.S. evacuation of thousands from northern Iraq after the collapse of a CIA-aided coup attempt against Hussein in 1996.

All six agreed Friday to be represented by Woolsey, who was asked to join the legal team by representatives of the Public Counsel Law Center, a Los Angeles-based legal defense group heading the defense of the men. Woolsey is taking the case on a pro bono basis,

The men, who have been in INS custody for a year, are seeking political asylum and plan to appeal the deportation ruling, attorneys said. Their wives and children have been granted asylum and are living in the United States.