The FBI conducted a secret investigation of Central Intelligence Agency officials on charges of attempting to murder the Iraqi leader, President Saddam Hussein, in 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday.
Quoting US intelligence sources, the newspaper said the officers were eventually cleared of the charges but the inquiry had a "chilling effect on the CIA's ability to conduct covert action operations against Iraq".
The newspaper said the plot to kill the Iraqi leader was designed to coincide with a military offensive against the Iraqi government by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a CIA-backed dissident group in northern Iraq.
"The story behind the FBI's criminal probe of the CIA's covert action program in northern Iraq is a complex tale of bitter rivalries, plots and counterplots," it said.
The INC was funded and backed by the CIA as an umbrella group to bring together rival Kurdish factions and other dissidents.
The report said Mr Wafiz Samarrai, a former chief of Iraqi military intelligence who defected to the INC, told the CIA of a plot to kill Mr Saddam. Mr Samarrai allegedly said that about 20 people loyal to him would ambush the Iraqi president when he was travelling through Mr Samarrai's home town of Samarra.
However, CIA headquarters flatly turned down the plan and ordered the team in the field not to discuss it further, the Los Angeles Times said. The assassination attempt was never carried out.
The newspaper said five CIA officers allegedly involved in the covert operation were given polygraph tests. They were told they were under investigation on the federal criminal charge of crossing state lines to attempt to kill the Iraqi leader, the article said.
According to a document obtained by the Times, the FBI quietly dropped the case in 1996 and the Justice Department decided in April of that year not to prosecute the CIA officers.
In August 1996, the article said, the remnant of the CIA's covert action programme in northern Iraq was crushed by the Iraqi army. A second covert action programme designed to attract and recruit Iraqi officers to foment a military coup had been destroyed by Mr Saddam in June 1996.
The Los Angeles Times said that programme, operated jointly with the British intelligence service MI6, was based in Jordan using a front group called the Iraqi National Accord.
Quoting CIA sources, the newspaper said this second programme was penetrated by Iraqi double agents who betrayed the Iraqi military officers who had worked with the US and British intelligence services.
The newspaper said Mr Saddam had executed at least 100 military officers and others who had co-operated with the US and the British intelligence agencies.