Ahmad Chalabi, 2004 News

Iraqi politician, lost his status as a favorite of the Pentagon and the Bush administration in May, when the U.S. ended a program in which it paid $335,000 a month to his Iraqi National Congress in exchange for intelligence gathering. A week later, U.S. troops and Iraqi police raided his home and his office, searching for evidence of corruption and fraud. Officials also accused Chalabi of telling Iranian officials that the U.S. had broken Iran's secret code used to send classified messages. The break was a long time coming; the White House justified its preemptive war on Iraq at least partially on assurances from Chalabi that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction, information that was deliberately misleading and in some cases, outright fabrication.