Meanwhile the CIA is refusing to hand over control of Iraq’s intelligence service to the newly elected Iraqi government. This according to a report by the Knight Ridder News Agency. Iraq’s secret police remains essentially an arm of the United States. The director was picked by the Bush administration, the agency is funded by the U.S. government and reports directly to the CIA. In addition the U.S. has barred the new government from looking at the sensitive national intelligence archives which are being stored inside the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad. One Iraqi politician told Knight Ridder “I prefer to call it the American Intelligence of Iraq, not the Iraqi Intelligence Service. If they insist on keeping it to themselves, we’ll have to form another one.” The U.S. has defended the set-up saying the measures are needed to protect Iraq’s secrets from being given to neighboring Iran.