A little earlier this evening I linked to this post from young DC blogger Kris Lofgren who got into the AEI Chalabi speech today and managed to score a few moments of quality time with Christopher Hitchens to boot.
In his post he tells us …
Hitchens then turned the subject back to Chalabi, his good friend. I asked him if he thought Chalabi had been passing American intelligence to the Iranians. “No,” he insisted. “It’s possible that with his training, you know, at [The University of] Chicago that with his own ability he was able to crack the codes. He is a mathematical genius. His expertise is cryptology. It is possible that he broke the codes himself.” (This is a paraphrase since I was walking down M Street and crossing Connecticut Avenue all while being amazed that I was having an actual conversation with Christopher Hitchens at the time). Now, I don’t believe this for one second. Why would Chalabi be trying to break American codes in his spare time anyway? Who does that if they are friendly to us? Suspicious, I say.
Now, I have to confess that I’m so pitiful at math that in high school I could barely crack a passing grade in trig. In fact, on more than one occasion I failed to crack it entirely. But why go into that?
In any case, even a math fool like me knew enough to laugh out loud when I read that. I’d love to hear Hitchens give a ten minute description of how he thinks modern cryptography works exactly.
Then TPM Reader TT wrote in with even more laughs …
In that article you linked to by the blogger who saw Chalabi speak at the AEI, Hitchens claims that Chalbi may have broken our or the Iranians’ codes (it isn’t clear which) himself. That is quite simply the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life. Chalabi would have about the same chance of breaking our or the Iranians’ codes as of building his own nuclear bombs.
Moreover, Chalabi did not specialize in cryptology but in group theory. There is no evidence that he is a mathematical genius, either — his publication record is not impressive.
I am a research mathematician who works in an areas pretty close to cryptology.
Quite simply, there is no way to take anything Hitchens says seriously ever again. Next to him, Scotty Mac is a paragon of credibility.
Aside from Hitchens’ speculation that Chalabi sat around using our diplomatic or military codes (some encrypted diplomatic cables he’d pulled out of the air, I assume) as some brainiac’s version of a Rubik’s Cube to pass the time while he wasn’t busy with embezzlement or forgery, this really is an example of the dingbat personality cult Chalabi managed to assemble around himself in DC.
Has Hitchens run his theory past Ahmad himself?
